THE ROSARY 



OF 



ILLUSTEATIONS OF THE 



BIBLE. 



EDITED BY 

REV. EDWARD E: HALE 



-" See, mother, — see ! 



Here are the very pearls God's ocean bears, 
Clear as the rain-drops falling from God's sky ! 
Here are the very jewels from God's earth, 
Which through long cycles have been black and dull, 
Waiting till God's own light should bid them shine. 
Twine them around my neck, my mother dear, 
And each shall speak to me in turn of Him ! " 



BOSTON : 
PUBLISHED BY PHILLIPS & SAMPSON. 
1 849. 




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1848, by 
PHILLIPS & SAMPSON, 
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts. 



CAMBRIDGE: 
METCALF AND COMPANY, 
PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The duties of the Editor of a volume of Selections are so 
simple as to need little explanation. It is my hope that most 
readers will find in this volume some passages of worth, at least, 
with which they are not wholly familiar. I have tried, also, to 
arrange the different selections in such an order, that the passage 
from author to author may not always seem sudden or vexatious. 
I have given the names of the different authors so far as they 
have been made known. 

Worcester, April 20, 1848. 



ILLUSTRATIONS, 

ENGRAVED ON STEEL. 



ELI AND SAMUEL, : 
HAGAR SENT OUT, : 
DAVID BEFORE SAUL, 
HOLY FAMILY, : : 
LORD OF THE VINEYARD 
WOMEN AT THE TOMB, : 



PAINTERS. 

J. S. COPLEY, R. A. : 



ENGRAVERS. PAGE 

A. H. RITCHIE, 

Vandyke, : : : : a. h. ritchie, 51 

c. vanloo, : : : : a. h. ritchie, 99 

pousine, : : : : : a. h. ritchie, 137 

j. opie, r. a. : : : a. h. ritchie, 175 

veit, :::::: a. h. ritchie, 206 



t 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

A WIDE FIELD BEFORE US, 13 

THE GARDEN, 24 

CREATION — THE REALM OF ORDER, : 25 

MORNING, 41 

GOD IN ALL THINGS, . . 42 

ENOCH, ........... 46 

THE GAME OF LIFE, 47 

HAGAR DEPARTED, ......... 51 

A MOTHER'S GRIEF, 52 

SOLACE IN SORROW, 53 

ELI, . . 59 

ELI AND SAMUEL, .64 

AS A LITTLE CHILD, 65 

OF SUCH IS THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, 66 

TEE MOTHER AND HER CHILD, 73 

THE NEW BIRTH, . . 76 

TRUTH ALMIGHTY, 77 

THE DROP OF DEW, . • ... . . . .78 

REMEMBER THE THINGS OF OLD, 80 

THE SPIRIT LAND, . . • • • ... .98 

THE HARP OF DAVID, 99 

HEBREW POETRY, ......... 100 

THE DYING HEBREW'S PRAYER, 117 

JEHOVAH LIVETH, . . . . v 122 

WORSHIP, . 123 

ON EARTH, AS IT IS IN HEAVEN, . . . . . . . 124 

THE GOSPEL HISTORY, 125 

THE DIFFUSION OF CHRISTIANITY AND ITS ORIGIN, . . . .131 



VI 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

THE MADONNA AND CHILD, 137 

THE FIRST MOMENT OF THE GOSPEL, ...... 140 

HYMN, 148 

MIDNIGHT, . 151 

FOR THREE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING, 153 

NIGHT, 154 

THE LIFE OF JESUS, . . 156 

THE GOOD SAMARITAN, 162 

THE LORD OF THE VINEYARD, 175 

ALMS-GIVING, 176 

CONSTANCY OF CHARACTER, ....... 178 

DUTY AND IMMORTALITY, 179 

AROUSE THEE, SOUL ! 185 

WE ARE BRETHREN a\ 187 

NOT ON A PRAYERLESS BED, . 189 

CONSTANCY, 193 

PAST FRIENDS, . . . . . . . . : 195 

DEATH AND SLEEP, . . . . . . . . .196 

THE SICK CHILD'S DREAM, 198 

THE NEWLY DEAD, 202 

EASTER DAY, . . . . 206 

PAUL BEFORE FESTUS AND AGR1PPA, ...... 209 

HYMN FOR THE BUILDING OF A COTTAGE, 223 

THE VILLAGE CHURCH, ........ 230 

SILENT WORSHIP, ........ 233 

HOLY PLACES AND THINGS, 253 

PREPARING FOR SUNDAY SERVICES, ..... 255 

WALK TO CHURCH, 256 

THE EMPTY CHURCH, 257 

THE OFFERTORY, 258 

A SABBATH IN BOSTON, ........ 263 

PRAYER, ........... 270 

THE SACRAMENT, ....... 271 

THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, 273 

VIA CRUCIS, VIA LUCIS, ........ 286 

A PRAYER, 289 

THE HA' BIBLE, 291 



A WIDE FIELD BEFORE US. 



The engravings which illustrate this volume 
are all copies of paintings, the subjects of which 
are found in the Bible. The reader will see, 
however, that the various poems and essays, here 
collected, relate not only to such scenes as might 
have been studies for the works of Christian art, 
but, with a wider range, look to the doctrines 
conveyed in the Bible, — to the results of those 
lives, the details of which give subjects to the 
Christian artist, — or, in one word, to that life at 
which every Christian aims, and for which in the 
Scriptures he seeks his guide. It is in this sense 
that we may venture to call this volume a volume 
of Illustrations of the Bible ; as well in the 
essays and poems selected for it, as in these 
engravings of which we have spoken. 

Such a field is a wide one. And in the attempt 
which we make at such illustration in this single 
2 



14 



A WIDE FIELD BEFORE US. 



volume, it may happen, in consequence, that these 
selections from different authors will seem col- 
lected at hazard, rather than grouped into a well- 
balanced whole. Besides the difference of style 
and temper, which is a matter of course in a com- 
pilation from so large a number of writers, there 
may appear a want of formal connection, arising 
from the wide range of the subjects brought under 
review. Leaving the book frankly to any fair 
criticism for such a defect, to which, undoubtedly, 
it lies open ; we may say that this want of con- 
gruity cannot, under the requisitions of our plan 
of illustration, be wholly avoided. We are study- 
ing not the Old Testament only, nor the details 
only of the life of Jesus, nor, in the abstract, the 
great lessons of God's spirit, or of the Christian 
gospel, only. But we are studying all of these. 
We are trying through all these lines of reflection 
to come to a clearer view of our religion and of 
its history. It must be that in such different lines 
there will be variety of treatment. 

The scenes which we draw from the Old Testa- 
ment, for instance, must have points of distinction, 
both in language and thought, from those which 
we draw from the New. It is in the comparison 



A WIDE FIELD BEFORE US. 



15 



of the one with the other that we have one great 
element of the value of each. " No manner of 
studying the sacred Scriptures,'' says a French 
theologian, from whom we make large extracts 
elsewhere, " no manner of studying the sacred 
Scriptures is more instructive, perhaps, or more 
useful, than those wide and long comparisons, 
where we contrast the two covenants in their books, 
doctrines, and rites, and even in the character of 
the divine messengers to whom the world owes 
them, or of the just who have obeyed, or of the bad 
who have violated them. Thus we study the two 
revelations at once ; we can distinguish without 
separating them — can bring them together without 
confounding them ; each lends and borrows light, 
so to speak, and is the clearer for it. Each of 
them has the splendor which it should have, each 
its own character, spirit, beauty, and sacredness. 
Such profound differences were at once necessary 
and desirable . The periods were different ; — look 
at the sacred annals, and see if the age of Abraham, 
or that of Moses, or David, or Ezra, resembles that 
of Jesus. The designs were different; — the old 
covenant, which was to endure only through a 
certain time, and to fill a certain place, was fitted 



16 A WIDE FIELD BEFORE US. 

only for the climate of Judea, her state of manners, 
of liberty, and civilization ; it is the porch, the ves- 
tibule, and not the building ; it is the court-yard, 
but not the sanctuary. In a word, the old coven- 
ant was addressed only to Jews, was made only 
for them and the few proselytes whom it almost 
regretted to receive ; the Gospel addresses itself 
to all men, its empire is the world, and it is so 
framed as to adapt itself wherever the sun shines, 
or men breathe the air." 

Such is a fair explanation, in one instance, of 
the contrasts which we know will be presented 
between the different papers in these volumes. 
Choosing from the wide range of theological com- 
position, we have made no effort to prevent these 
contrasts of manner, of treatment, or of subject. 
To apologize for apparent want of connection 
. would be to apologize for the contrasts and variety 
which all Life shows ; and which religious thought 
must show if it fairly adapts itself to the phases and 
changes of Life. Thus, to speak only of the three 
main divisions of personal religious experience, 
religious thought is quite incomplete, unless it 
adapts itself to all of those three. This will appear 
by a glance at them. 



A WIDE FIELD BEFORE US. 17 

No man would be satisfied, — as a man, — 
with simple, child-like, Eden innocence, for the 
whole of his religious inspiration. We enjoy it 
in children, but we do not want a world of children. 
We like to see flowers, but we should be sorry in 
autumn to find the trees white with flowers. We 
are glad to hear of Eden, but still it was in God's 
providence that the world was made to contain 
something beside set garden paths, and neat, trim 
parterres. Virtue is better than innocence : — 
virtue which resists temptation, better than inno- 
cence which has not been tried. Principle is 
better than impulse. And, as the boy grows to be 
a man, the dominant, in the crash of chord and 
discord which surrounds him, is in this question : 
— " Shall I do thus, and thus, only because it is 
pleasant to do it ? I have done it, I have studied, 
have obeyed, because it seemed agreeable ; there 
was no reason why I should not do so ; but is there 
no reason why I should? Why must I obey? 
Why labor ? Why live at all ? " 

Here is a stormy question, — a question of wild 
torture to him until he works his way through into 
the second stage of a religious life. Perhaps he 
never gets to that stage ! Perhaps he abandons 
2* 



18^ A WIDE FIELD BEFORE US. 

all hope of seeing through the mist, and goes 
stumbling on, without guide, until he dies. Many 
men do so. Or perhaps he falls back on this 
good-natured, unbought, uncared-for impulse of 
childhood, and trusts to that only ; content to go 
on, through life, a " good-natured fellow;" a person 
"who means well enough." Many men do so. 
Perhaps he works through the thicket, however, 
and comes out upon firm ground into the light, find- 
ing that God is, and that because God is, there are 
certain necessities in life which are right : things 
which must be, — ought to be : things which 
make up Duty. Then he begins to live by princi- 
ple, added to his impulse. And the two fuse 
together slowly, melt into each other slowly, 
until the chain shines with the true Corinthian 
lustre, a metal of more worth than either of the 
two which go to make it. He does right because 
it is right : he obeys God because he is God. 

But this is not the end. He does not stop satis- 
fied there. Bare allegiance, though it be to the 
Lord of heaven, — bare submission cannot satisfy 
the child of the Lord of heaven. This duty, which 
he reverences, is " the daughter of the voice of 
God" — but it is a stern daughter. " Because right 



A WIDE FIELD BEFORE US. 



19 



is right, to follow right is wisdom ;" but wisdom 
alone will not satisfy the spirit of man. If it did, 
we should never see, as we do, the most faithful 
and earnest men seeming yet miserably unhappy: 
such men as one would call most excellent men, if 
they did not commit high treason against virtue 
by making it disagreeable. The old puritans were 
such men. Every one knows such men. They 
obey, they serve, but it seems a gallant, forced 
obedience, wrung out of them by stern principle — 
the victory of the martyr whose whole frame is on 
the rack. 

These men are waiting for, are needing, the 
third, the highest religious influence, without which 
the two others cannot satisfy. In pure, kind im- 
pulse, in this law of right which they obey so 
sternly, they have not yet discerned the one cen- 
tral principle of God's unceasing love, that must 
enter their souls, and be a part of their motive, 
before they can truly live. As impulse paled 
before cold principle, so will the bonds of mere 
stern principle hang slack, though as strong as 
ever, when true love of men binds the aspiring man 
to his brethren. As his God loves him, so he 
loves them. He forgives them, as by God he 
I 



20 



A WIDE FIELD BEFORE US. 



would be forgiven. The mere desire to obey God 
is no longer the immediate motive. He seeks 
God's spirit. He will be inspirited by God. He 
seeks to act with God ; to be a laborer together 
with God; to save God's children; to bind together; 
to live as a brother with his brethren. 

This motive is sometimes called the impulse of 
the affections. The name may be such, but it is 
an impulse as much higher than that blind impulse 
of the beginning, as is the heaven which it rules 
higher than the old paradise, where were fruit trees, 
and onyx stones, and gold-mines. The man who 
knows not temptation, in the fresh, simple inno- 
cence of childhood, enjoying this fruit and that of 
the world which is around him, enters a garden 
like that paradise. But the trained and disciplined 
man, who through pain is born again ; who, through 
effort, through trial, through danger, has refined 
out virtue from that simple ore, enters heaven itself 
in the. kindly disposition, the love, the thought for 
others, which signalize his life. 

These three epochs mark all life. They are in 
the world's history. The first is in that untrained 
beginning of society, the paradise of the Bible, — 
the savage simplicity of the dreamy philosophy of 



A WIDE FIELD BEFORE US. 21 

Rousseau. It shows man unperverted because 
untried. 

The second, the seizing on bare right, bare 
truth, all unclothed, is the habit with which the 
world has too often, has almost always, looked 
upon its religion, — as a hard, arbitrary code of 
law, to drag it along to a necessary obedience. 

We need not underrate this discipline, but we 
must see that it brings the world to the highest 
religious development, where every man shall 
love his God and love his brethren. Then the 
sword shall cease to strike, the chain shall cease 
to bind, the lash shall cease to fall, money shall 
cease to bribe, and power cease to threaten, be- 
cause each man shall see God's image in his 
brother, and shall willingly try to serve the cause 
of the child of a common father. 

The three different verses of Miss Bremer's 
hymn express these three different stages of reli- 
gious life : — 

" I thirst ! — O, grant the waters pure, 
Which flowed by Eden's rosy bower ; 
The glorious, fresh, and silver stream, 
The ever young, whose flashing gleam 



22 



A WIDE FIELD BEFORE US. 



Once before angel footsteps rolled ; 
Whose sands were wisdom's priceless gold. 

" I thirst ! — O bounteous source of Truth, 
Give coolness to my fevered youth ; 
Make the sick heart more strong and wise ; 
Take spectral visions from mine eyes ; 
O, let me quench my thirst in thee, 
And pure, and strong, and holy be ! 

" I thirst ! — O God, great Source of Love ! 
Infinite Life streams from above. 
O, give one drop, and let me live ! 
The barren world has nought to give ; 
No solace have its streams for me ; 
I thirst alone for heaven and thee." 

Eden, right, and heaven ; or purity, virtue, and 
love of God : these are different stages of every 
man's true religious experience. They must all 
be met ; must all be provided for ; must all be illus- 
trated. 

So wide are the general divisions of the subjects 
before us. If, besides this, we remind the reader 
that the volume in his hand is made up from writers 
of different times, different countries, and different 



A WIDE FIELD BEFORE US. 



23 



confessions ; that we have preferred to glean thus 
widely, and not limit our selections to any single 
field, we trust he will see more frequently, and with 
more curiosity, the one spirit in which all these 
pens agree, than the diversity, or the contrast even, 
of their methods or moods of uttering it. 



THE GARDEN. 

BY JONES VERY. 

I saw the spot where our first parents dwelt ; 
And yet it wore to me no face of change, 
For, while amid its fields and groves, I felt 
As if I had not sinned, nor thought it strange ; 
My eye seemed but a part of every sight, 
My ear heard music in each sound that rose, 
Each sense forever found a new delight, 
Such as the spirit's vision only knows ; 
Each act some new and ever-varying joy 
Did by my father's love for me prepare ; 
To dress the spot my ever fresh employ, 
And in the glorious whole with him to share ; 
No more without the flaming gate to stray, 
No more for sin's dark stain the debt of death to pay. 



CREATION. 

THE REALM OF ORDER. 

BY REV. JAMES MARTIN EAU. 

In the production and preservation of order, all 
men recognize something that is sacred. We have 
an intuitive conviction that it is not, at bottom, the 
earliest condition of things ; that whatever is, rose 
out of some dead ground-work of confusion and 
nothingness, and incessantly gravitates thither- 
wards again; and that, without a positive energy of 
God, no universe could have emerged from the void, 
or be suspended out of it for an hour. There is no 
task more indubitably divine than the creation of 
beauty out of chaos, the imposition of law upon the 
lawless, and the setting forth of times and seasons 
from the stagnant and eternal night. And so, the 
Bible opens with a work of arrangement, and closes 
with one of restoration ; looks round the ancient 
firmament at first, and sees that all is good, and 
surveys the new heavens at last, to make sure that 
evil is no more. Far back in the old eternity, it 
ushers us into God's presence : and he is engaged 
3 



26 



THE REALM OF ORDER. 



in dividing the light from the darkness, arid shaping 
the orbs that determine days and years ; turning 
the vapors of the abyss into the sweet breath of 
life, teaching the little grass to grow, and trusting 
the forest tree with the seed that is in itself, to be 
punctually dropped upon the earth ; filling the 
mountain slope, the sedgy plain, the open air, the 
hidden deep, with various creatures kept by happy 
instincts within the limits of his will ; and setting 
over all, in likeness of himself, the adapting intel- 
lect, the affectionate spirit, and mysterious con- 
science, of lordly and reflective man. The birth 
of order was the first act of God, who rested not 
till all was blessed and sanctified. And far for- 
ward in the eternity to come, we are brought 
before his face again for judgment. The spoiling 
of his works, the wild wandering from his will, he 
will bear no more : the disorder that has gathered 
together shall be rectified: he will again divide 
the darkness from the light ; and confusion and 
wrong — all that hurts and destroys — shall be 
thrust into unknown depths : while wisdom and 
holiness shall be as the brightness of the firma- 
ment and as the stars forever and ever. As it was 
when he was Alpha, so will it be when he is 



THE REALM OF ORDER. 



27 



Omega. He is one that " loveth pureness" still : 
and the stream of providence — the river that went 
out of Eden — however foul with the taint of evil 
while it takes its course through human history, 
shall become the river of the water of life, clear as 
crystal, that nurtures the secret root of all holy 
and immortal things. 

This divine regard for order proceeds from an 
attribute in which we also are made to participate, 
and which puts us into awful kindred with his 
perfections. Intelligent free-will, a self-determin- 
ing mind, is the only true originating cause of 
which we can conceive ; the sole power capable 
of giving law where there was none before, and of 
creating the necessity by which it is thenceforth 
obeyed. There was a will before there was a 
must. Nothing else, we feel assured, could avail, 
amid a boundless primeval unsettledness, to mark 
out a certain fixed method of existence, and no 
other, and make it to be ; could draw forth an 
actual, defined, and amenable universe from the 
sphere of infinite possibilities. The indeterminate, 
the chaotic, lies in our thought behind and around 
the determinate and constituted : and to sketch a 
positive system, and bid its vivid lines of order 



28 



THE REALM OF ORDER. 



shine on the dark canvass of negation, is the spe- 
cial office of the free self-moving spirit, whereby 
God lifts us up above nature into the image of 
himself. Hence we, too, in proportion as we 
approach him, shall put our hand to a light task ; 
shall organize the loose materials that, touched by 
a creative will, may cease to be without form, and 
void ; shall set our expanse of years into periods 
ruled by the lights of duty, and refreshed by the 
shades of prayer ; shall mould every shapeless 
impulse, subdue every rugged difficulty, fill every 
empty space of opportunity with good, and breathe 
a living soul into the very dust and clod of our 
existence. As " God is not the author of con- 
fusion, but of peace," so the service of God infuses 
a spirit of method and proportion into the outward 
life and the inward mind ; and pure religion is a 
principle of universal order. 

No two things, indeed, can be more at variance 
with each other than a devout and an unregulated 
life. Devotion is holy regulation, guiding hand 
and heart; a surrender of self-will, — that main 
source of uncertainty and caprice, — and a loving 
subordination to the only rule that cannot change. 
Devotion is the steady attraction of the sou] 



THE REALM OF ORDER. 29 

towards one luminous object, discerned across the 
passionate infinite, and drawing thoughts, deeds, 
affections, into an orbit, silent, seasonal, and accu- 
rately true. In a mind submitted to the touch of 
God, there is a certain rhythm of music, which, 
however it may swell into the thunder or sink into 
a sigh, has still a basis of clear, unbroken melody. 
The discordant starts of passion, the whimsical 
snatches of appetite, the inarticulate whinings of 
discontent, are never heard ; and the spirit is like 
an organ, delivered from the tumbling of chance 
pressures on its keys, and given over to the hand 
of a divine skill. Nay, so inexorable is the de- 
mand of religion for order, that it shrinks from any 
one allowed irregularity, as the musician from a 
constant mistake in the performance of some 
heavenly strain. Its perpetual effort is to prevail 
over all things loose and turbid ; to swallow up 
the elements of confusion in human life ; and 
banish chance from the soul, as God excludes it 
from the universe. It is quite impossible that an 
idle, floating spirit can ever look with clear eye to 
God : spreading its miserable anarchy before the 
symmetry of the creative mind : in the midst of a 
disorderly being, that has neither centre nor cir- 
3* 



30 



THE REALM OF ORDER. 



cumference, kneeling beneath the glorious sky, 
that everywhere has both : and from a life that is 
all failure, turning to the Lord of the silent stars, 
of whose punctual thought it is, that " not one 
faileth." The heavens, with their everlasting 
faithfulness, look down on no sadder contradiction 
than the sluggard and the slattern in their prayers. 

To maintain the sacred governance of life is to 
recognize and preserve the due rank of all things 
within us and without. For there is a system of 
ranks extending through the spiritual world of 
which we form a part. The faculties and affec- 
tions of the single mind are no democracy of 
principles, each of which, in the determinations of 
the will, is to have equal suffrage with the rest ; 
but an orderly series, in which every member has 
a right divine over that below. The individuals 
composing the communities of men do not arrange 
themselves into a deal level of spirits, in which 
none are above and none beneath ; but there are 
centres of natural majesty that break up the mass 
into groups and proportions that you cannot 
change. And man himself, by the highest Will, 
is inserted between things of which he is lord, and 
obligations which he must serve. In short, the 



THE REALM OF ORDER. 



31 



hierarchy of nature is Episcopalian throughout : 
and in conforming to its order, the active part of 
our duty consists in this, — that we must rule and 
keep under our hand whatever is beneath us ; 
assigning to everything its due place. 

The whole scheme of our voluntary actions, all 
that we do from morning to night of every day, 
is beyond doubt intrusted to our control. No 
power, without our consent, can share the mon- 
archy of this realm, or constrain us to lift a hand 
or speak a word where resolution bids us be still 
and silent. And from our inmost consciousness 
we do know that, whenever we will, we can 
make ourselves execute whatever we approve, and 
strangle in its birth whatever we abhor. To-mor- 
row morning, if you choose to take up a spirit of 
such power, you may rise like a soul without a 
past ; fresh for the future as an Adam untempted 
yet ; disengaged from the manifold coil of willing 
usage, and with every link of guilty habit shaken 
off. I know, indeed, that you will not; that 
no man ever will ; but the hindrance is with 
yourself alone. The coming hours are open yet, 
— pure and spotless receptacles for whatever you 
may deposit there ; pledged to no evil, secure of 



32 



THE REALM OF ORDER. 



no good; neither mortgaged to greedy passion, 
nor given to generous toil. There they lie in 
non-existence still ; ready to be organized by a 
creative spirit of beauty, or made foul with de- 
formity and waste. Perhaps it is this thought, 
this secret sense of moral contingency, that gives 
to so simple a thing as the beat of a pendulum, or 
the forward start of the finger on the dial, a so- 
lemnity beyond expression. The gliding heavens 
are less awful at midnight than the ticking clock. 
Their noiseless movement, undivided, serene, and 
everlasting, is as the flow of divine duration, 
that cannot affect the place of the eternal God. 
But these sharp strokes, with their inexorably 
steady intersections, so agree with our successive 
thoughts, that they seem like the punctual stops 
counting off our very souls into the past ; — the 
flitting messengers, that dip for a moment on our 
hearts, then bear the pure or sinful thing irrevo- 
cably away ; — light with mystic hopes as they 
arrive, charged with sad realities as they depart. 
So passes, and we cannot stay it, our only portion 
of opportunity ; the fragments of that blessed 
chance, which has been travelling to us from all 
eternity, are dropping quickly off. Let us start 



THE REALM OF ORDER. 



33 



up and live : here come the moments that cannot 
be had again ; some few may yet be filled with 
imperishable good. 

There is no conscious power like that which a 
wise and Christian heart asserts, when resolved to 
absorb the dead matter of its existence, and from 
the elements of former waste and decay to put 
forth a new and vernal life. The accurate econ- 
omy of instants, the proportionate distribution of 
duties, the faithful observance of law, as it is an 
exercise of strength, so gives a sense of strenu- 
ous liberty. Compared with this, how poor a 
delusion is the spurious freedom which is the 
idler's boast ! He says that he has his time at his 
disposal ; but in truth, he is at the disposal of his 
time. No novelty of the moment canvasses him 
in vain ; any chance suggestion may have him ; 
whiffed as he is hither and thither, like a stray 
feather on the wandering breeze. The true stamp 
of manhood is not on him, and therefore the image 
of godship has faded away: for he is lord of 
nothing, not even of himself ; his will is ever wait- 
ing to be tempted, and conscience is thrust out 
among the mean rabble of candidates that court it. 
The wing of resolution, mighty to lift us nearer 



34 



THE REALM OF ORDER. 



God, is broken quite, and there is nothing to stay 
the downward gravitation of a nature passive and 
heavy too. And so, first a weak affection for 
persons supplants the sense of right : to be itself, 
in turn, destroyed by a baser appetite for things. 
This woful declension is the natural outgoing of 
those who presume to try an unregulated life. A 
systematic organization of the personal habits, 
devised in moments of devout and earnest reason, 
is a necessary means, amid the fluctuations of the 
spirit, of giving to the better mind its rightful 
authority over the worse. Those only will neglect 
it, who either do not know their weakness, or have 
lost all healthy reliance on their strength. 

It is a part, then, of the faithfulness and freedom 
of a holy mind, to keep the whole range of out- 
ward action under severe control ; to administer 
the hours in full view of the vigilant police of con- 
science ; and to introduce even into the lesser 
materials of life the precision and concinnity which 
are the natural symbols of a pure and constant 
spirit. And it belongs to the humility of a devout 
heart, not to trust itself to the uncertain ebb and 
flow of thought, and float opportunity away on the 
giddy waters of inconstancy ; but to arrange a 



THE REALM OF ORDER. 



35 



method of life in the hour of high purpose and 
clear insight, and then compel the meaner self to 
work out the prescription of the nobler. Yet this, 
after all, though an essential check to our insta- 
bility, is but the beginning of wisdom. The mere 
distribution of action in quantity, however well 
proportioned, does not fulfil the requisites of a 
Christian order. This surveyor's work, — this par- 
titioning out the. superficies of life, and marking 
off the orchard and the field, the meadow and the 
grove, — will make no grass to grow, will open no 
blossom and mature no seed. The seasonal cul- 
ture of the soul requires all this ; yet may yield 
poor produce, when this is done. Without the 
deeper symmetry of the spirit, the harmonious 
working of living powers there, the boundaries of 
action, however neat, will be but a void frame- 
work, inclosing barrenness and sand. Despise 
not the ceremonial of the moral life ; it is our 
needful speech and articulation ; but oh ! mistake 
it not for the true and infinite worship that should 
breathe through it. Mere mechanism, however 
perfect, has this misfortune, that it cannot set fast 
its own loose screws, but rather shakes them into 
more frightful confusion; till the power, late so 



36 



THE REALM OF ORDER. 



smooth, works only crash and ruin, and goes 
headlong back to chaos. And so is it where there 
is nothing profounder than the systematizing facul- 
ty in the organization of a man's life. Destitute 
of adaptive and restorative energy, with no per- 
ception of a spiritual order that may remain above 
disturbance and express itself through obstructions 
all the more, interruptions bewilder and upset him. 
Ill health in himself, or the afflictions of others, 
that stop his projects and give him pause by a 
touch on his affections, irritate and weary him ; 
he grows dizzy with the inroads on his schemes, 
gives up the count so hopefully begun, and runs 
down in rapid discords. The soul of Christian 
order has in it something quite different from this ; 
more like the blessed force of nature that con- 
sumes its withered leaves as punctually as they 
fall, and so makes the spread of decay a thing 
impossible ; that has so unwearied an appetite for 
the creation of beauty and productiveness, that it 
makes no complaint of rottenness and death, but 
draws from them the sap of life, and weaves again 
the foliage and the fruit. No less a vital spon- 
taneity than this is needed in the Christian soul ; 
for in human life, as in external nature, the ele- 



THE REALM OF ORDER. 37 

merits of corruption and disorder are always ac- 
cumulating, and, unless they are to breed pesti- 
lence, must be kept down and effectually absorbed. 
As in science, so in practical existence, our theory 
or ideal must ever be framed upon assumptions 
only partially true. The conditions required for 
its fulfilment will never be present all at once and 
all alone ; so that the realization will be but ap- 
proximate ; arid a constant tension of the soul is 
needed to press it nearer and nearer to the ulti- 
mate design. For want of a religious source, an 
exact apparent order in the life may coexist with 
an essential disorder secreted within. Are we 
not conscious that so it is, whenever the toil of our 
hands, though punctually visited, receives no con- 
sent of our hearts ; when the spirit flies, with 
heavy wing, from reach to reach of time ; and, 
like Noah's dove, seeing only wave after wave of 
a dreary flood, finds no rest for the sole of its foot, 
till it gets back to the ark of its narrow comforts ? 
Is it not a plain inversion of the true order of 
things, when we do our work for the sake of the 
following rest, instead of accepting our rest as the 
preparative for work ? And while this continues 
to be the case, there will be a hidden aching, a 
4 



38 



THE REALM OF ORDER. 



dark corroding speck within the soul, which no 
outward method or proportion can ever charm 
away. Nor can the precision of the will be even 
sustained at all without the symmetry of the affec- 
tions. As well might you think to set your 
broken compass right by hand : if it be foul and 
stiff, swinging and trembling no more in obedience 
to its mysterious attraction, its blessed guidance 
is gone ; and after the first straight line of your 
direction, you sail upon the chances of destruction. 

To prevent this evil, of method just creeping up 
the lower part of life, and passing no further, no 
positive rule, from the very nature of the case, can 
well be given. We can only say that, besides 
subjecting whatever is beneath us, there is also 
this passive part of Christian order, that we must 
surrender ourselves entirely to what is above us ; 
and having put all lesser things into their place, 
we must then take and keep our own. Could, 
indeed, this proportion of the affections invariably 
remain, it would supersede all our mechanism, and 
take care of the outward harmony ; and we should 
have no need to apply the rules of a Franklin to 
the spirit of a Christ. But even short of this 
blessed emancipation, we should rise into a higher 



THE REALM OF ORDER. 



39 



atmosphere ; escaping the wretched thraldom of 
reluctant duties ; and yield a free consent, through 
love, to that which else were irksome ; quietly 
depositing ourselves on every work that brings its 
sacred claim, and moving in it, instead of writhing 
to get beyond it. They tell you that habit recon- 
ciles you in time to many unwelcome things. Let 
us not trust to this alone. Custom indeed sweet- 
ens the rugged lot when the cheerful soul is in it ; 
it does but embitter it the more, when the soul 
stays out of it. But when harshnesses are borne, 
and even spontaneously embraced, for the sake of 
God who hints them to our conscience, a perfect 
agreement ensues between the spirit and the letter 
of our life. We feel no weariness ; delivered now 
from the intolerable burthen of flagging affections. 
We are disturbed by no ambitions, conscious of 
no jealousies of other men ; for competition has no 
place in things divine : and even in lower matters, 
it is, to the thoughtful and devout, but a quiet in- 
terrogation of Providence ; and the true heart that 
prefers the question cannot be discontented with 
the answer. We cease to desire a change : we 
feel that life affords no time for restlessness ; that 
in persistency is our only hope : and a blessed 



40 



THE REALM OF ORDER. 



conservatism of spirit comes over us, that claims 
nothing but simple leave to go on serving and 
loving still. And so existence, to the devout, 
becomes, not confused, but peaceful, like a service 
in the churches of the saints. 



MORNING. 



BY JONES VERY. 

The light will never open sightless eyes, 

It comes to those who willingly would see ; 

And every object, — hill, and stream, and skies, — 

Rejoice within the encircling line to be ; 

'Tis day, — the field is filled with busy hands, 

The shop resounds with noisy workmen's din, 

The traveller with his staff already stands, 

His yet unmeasured journey to begin ; 

The light breaks gently, too, within the breast, — 

Yet there no eye awaits the crimson morn, 

The forge and noisy anvil are at rest, 

Nor men nor oxen tread the fields of corn, 

Nor pilgrim lifts his staff, — it is no day 

To those who find on earth their place to stay. 
4# 



GOD IN ALL THINGS. 



BY JOHN STERLING. 

O thou ! who strength and wisdom sheddest 

O'er all thy countless works below, 
And harmony and beauty spreadest 

On lands unmoved, and seas that flow ! 
From grains and motes to spheres uncounted, 

From deep beneath to suns above, 
My gaze, with awe and joy, has mounted, 

And found in all thy ordering love. 

The fly around me smoothly flitting, 

The lark that hymns the morning star, 
The swan on crystal water sitting, 

The eagle hung in skies afar — 
To all their cleaving wings thou givest, 

Like those that bear the seraph's flight ; 
In all, O perfect Will ! thou livest, 

For all hast oped thy world of light. 



GOD IN ALL THINGS. 



43 



The grass that springs beside the fountain, 

The silver waves that sparkle there, 
The trees that robe the shadowing mountain, 

And high o'er all the limpid air, 
Amid the vale, each lowly dwelling, 

Whose hearts with sweet religion shine, — 
In measure all things round are swelling 

With tranquil being's force divine. 

And deep and vast beyond our wonder, 

The links of power that bind the whole, 
While day and dusk, and breeze and thunder, 

And life and death, unceasing roll. 
While all is wheeled in endless motion, 

Thou changest not, upholding all ; 
And lifting man in pure devotion, 

On thee thou teachest him to call. 

To him, thy child, thyself revealing, 

He sees what all is meant to be ; 
From him thy secret not concealing, 

Thou bidd'st his will aspire to thee. 
And so we own in thy creation 

An image painting all thou art ; 
And, crowning all the revelation, 

Thy loftiest work, a human heart. 



44 



GOD IN ALL THINGS. 



The will, the love, the sunlike reason, 

Which thou hast made the strength of man, 
May ebb and flow through day and season, 

And oft may mar their seeming plan ; 
But thou art here to nerve and fashion 

With better hopes our world of care, 
To calm each base and lawless passion, 

And so the heavenly life repair. 

In all the track of earth-born ages, 

Each day displays thy guidance clear, 
And, best divined by holiest sages, 

Makes every child, in part, a seer. 
Thy laws are bright with purest glory, 

To us thou givest congenial eyes, 
And so, in earth's unfolding story, 

We read thy truth that fills the skies. 

But 'mid thy countless forms of being, 

One shines supreme o'er all beside, 
And man, in all thy wisdom seeing, 

In Him reveres a sinless guide. 
In Him alone, no longer shrouded 

By mist that dims all meaner things, 
Thou dwell' st, O God ! unveiled, unclouded, 

And fearless peace thy presence brings. 



GOD IN ALL THINGS. 



Then teach my heart celestial brightness ! 

To know that thou art hid no more ! 
To sun my spirit's dear-bought whiteness 

Beneath thy rays, and upward soar ! 
In all that is, a law unchanging 

Of truth and love may I behold, 
And own, 'mid thought's unbounded ranging 

The timeless One proclaimed of old ! 



ENOCH. 



BY JONES VERY. 

I looked to find a man who walked with God, 
Like the translated patriarch of old ; — 
Though gladdened millions on his footstool trod, 
Yet none with him did such sweet converse hold ; 
I heard the wind in low complaint go by, 
That none its melodies like him could hear ; 
Day unto day spoke wisdom from on high, 
Yet none like David turned a willing ear ; 
God walked alone unhonored through the earth ; 
For him no heart-built temple open stood ; 
The soul, forgetful of her nobler birth, 
Had hewn him lofty shrines of stone and wood, 
And left unfinished and in ruins still 
The only temple he delights to fill. 



THE GAME OE L I E E .* 

Unhappy Youth ! that thoughtful eye, 

That gaze of fixed intensity, 

That cloud upon thy open brow, 

Those firm closed lips, — become thee now. 

Bethink thee long ; bethink thee well ; 

For he, the dark, the terrible, 

Is busy every thought to scan, 

To watch each move, to thwart each plan. 

His fiendish eye is on thee glaring ; 

His brow a frown of hate is wearing ; 

And on his curling lip a smile 

Of scornful triumph plays the while, 

As if already sure to win 

That game thy all is ventured in. 

Oh ! lay the dark malignity 

Which flashes from that fearful eye ; 

And by that guardian angel's care, 

So mildly, yet so sadly fair, 



* Moritz Retzsch's drawing, with this name, represents Satan playing chess 
with a young man for his soul. They play upon a tomb, with the pieces named 
in the poem above. 



48 



THE GAME OF LIFE. 



With form half turned and half spread wing, 

But yet still fondly lingering, 

As if reluctant to forsake 

That game which has so much at stake ; 

O, think ! and rouse thee to resist 

Thy terrible antagonist ; 

'T were death to lose, 't were life to win, 

The game thou now art busied in ! 

Though Pleasure, gay, alluring stand, 
And hold in her inviting hand 
The sparkling cup, which seems so fair, 
Though more than death is ambushed there ; 
Though Avarice, with his coffered gain ; 
Though Pride, with all his pageant train ; 
Though Indolence, with soft closed lid, 
And Falsehood, with his dagger hid ; 
Though Unbelief, in scornful mood, 
And Christ-contemning attitude ; 
Though Doubts, which seem so weak and small, 
.Yet pressing furthest on of all ; — 
Yes ! though all these, — and though even he, 
Thy hating, hateful enemy, 
May, one and all, with hellish power, 
Oppose thee in this fearful hour ; — 



THE GAME OF LIFE. 



49 



Though, since the contest was begun, 

Thou much hast lost, and little won ; 

And though so doubtful seems to be 

Thy present chance of victory ; — 

Yet, by thy soul's eternal doom ; 

By the dark meaning of that tomb ; 

By all the joy that triumph brings ; 

By all the unutterable things 

Which wait thee if a loser there ; 

Shrink not, — despair not, — all things dare ! 

'T is not too late, — 't will not be vain, 

For thine is still a powerful train,— 

*- 

Religion left thy guard to be, 

And Hope and Truth to castle thee. 

And Prayers, oh, press them boldly on ! 

They may win back the peace that 's gone, 

Humility and Love restore, 

And Innocence make thine once more. 

Yet no, not all ! not even Prayer* 

Can all thy heavy loss repair ; 

Thou 'st played too long, too much hast lost, 

To be again what first thou wast, 



* But three prayers are left on the board. 

5 



THE GAME OF LIFE. 

When, heaven-defended for the strife, 
Thou entered' st on the Game of Life. 

Ah ! who the great result can see, 
If winner, — loser, — thou wilt be ? 
Oh, pause and think ! a few moves more, 
Then shall that doubtful game be o'er, 
And thy soul's destiny be known — 
We leave thee, trembling for thine own ! 



HAGAR DEPARTED. 

Genesis xxi. 9 — 21. 

A mother drives a mother from her home ! — 
With tears the patriarch sees that dawning day : 

With tears the child receives an outcast's doom : 
With tears his mother leads him far away ! 

The desert welcomes those by men outcast, 

The desert sees her want, and hears her cry, — 

" Beneath this parched shade, rest, child, thy last ! 
Let not thy mother see her darling die ! " 



Tears are but dew-drops at gray morning-tide, 
And God has beams of love to dry them all : 

Deserts are wide : — but His reign far more wide 
Who from the rock can bid the fountain fall. 

" Hagar, arise ! — and bid thy boy arise ! 

The orphan's God, the widow's helper, know ! 
Tears flow not vainly from a mother's eyes, 

See at thy feet the living waters flow ! 
The desert echoes not in vain his cries, 

God hears him in his agony of woe : 

God shall be with him wheresoe'er he go ! " 



A MOTHER'S GRIEF. 



A maiden sat at eventide 

Beside a clear and placid stream, 
And smiled as in its depths she saw 

A trembling star's reflected beam. 

She smiled until that beam was lost, 
As cross the sky a cloud was driven, 

And then she wept, and then forgot 
The star was shining still in heaven. 

A mother sat beside life's stream, 
Watching a dying child at dawn, 

And smiled as in its eye she saw 
A hope that it might still live on. 

She smiled until that hope was lost, 
But watched for breath until the even, 

And then she wept, and then forgot 
The child was living still in heaven. 



SOLACE IN SOMtOW. 

" God Almighty! 
There is a soul of goodness in things evil 
Would men observingly distil it out." 

Shakspere. 

I. 

Count each affliction, whether light or grave, 
God's messenger sent down to thee. Do thou 
With courtesy receive him ; rise and bow, 
And ere his shadow pass thy threshold, crave 
Permission first his heavenly feet to lave. 
Then lay before him all thou hast, allow 
No cloud of passion to usurp thy brow 
Or mar thy hospitality, no wave 
Of mortal tumult to obliterate 
The souPs marmoreal calmness. Grief should be 
Like joy ; majestic, equable, sedate, 
Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free ; 
Strong to consume small troubles, to commend 
Great thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts lasting 
to the end. 

Aubrey de Vere. 

5* 



54 



SOLACE IN SORROW. 



II. 

There 's not a heath, however rude, 
But hath some little flower 

To brighten up its solitude, 
And scent the evening hour* 

There 's not a heart, however cast 
By grief and sorrow down, 

But hath some memory of the past 
To love and call its own. 



III. 

WALKING LESSONS. 

Even as a nurse, whose child's imperfect pace 
Can hardly lead his foot from place to place, 
Leaves her fond kissing, sets him down to go, 
Nor does uphold him for a step or two, — 
But when she finds that he begins to fall 
She holds him up, and kisses him withal, — 
So God from man sometimes withdraws his hand 
A while, to teach his infant faith to stand ; 
But when he sees his feeble strength begin 
To fail, he gently takes him up again. 

QUARLES. 



SOLACE IN SORROW. 



55 



IV. 

SONNET. 

Love to the tender ; peace to those who mourn ; 
Hope to the hopeless ; hope that does not fail, 
Whose symbol is the anchor, not the sail ; 
Glory that spreads to heaven's remotest bourn, 
And to its centre doth again return 
Like music ; health revisiting the frail ; 
Freedom to those who pine in dungeons pale ; 
Sorrows which God hath willed and Christ hath 
worn ! 

Omnipotence to be the poor man's shield ; 
Light, uncreated light, to cheer the blind ; 
Infinite mercy sent to heal and bind 
The wounds encountered in life's well-fought field ; 
All these are gifts of God ; nor these alone : 
Himself he gives to all who make those gifts their 
own. 

Aubrey de Vere. 



V. 

He, who for love has undergone 
The worst that can befall, 

Is happier, thousand fold, than one 
Who never loved at all ! 



56 



SOLACE IN SORROW. 



A grace within his soul has reigned 
Which nothing else can bring ; — 

Thank God for all that I have gained 
By that high suffering. 

R. M. Milne s. 



VI. 

CHRISTIAN ENDURANCE. 

Mortal ! that standest on a point of time, 

With an eternity on either hand, 
Thou hast one duty above all sublime, 

Where thou art placed, serenely there to stand. 

To stand, undaunted by the threatening death, 
Or harder circumstance of living doom ; 

Nor less untempted by the odorous breath 
Of hope, that issues even from the tomb. 

For hope will never dull the present pain, 
Nor fear will ever keep thee safe from fall, 

Unless thou hast in thee a mind, to reign 
Over thyself, as God is over all. 

'T is well in deeds of good, though small, to thrive ; 

'T is well some part of ill, though small, to cure; 
'T is well, with onward, upward hope, to strive ; 

Yet better and diviner to endure. 



SOLACE IN SORROW. 



57 



What but this virtue's solitary power, 

Through all the lusts and dreams of Greece and 
Rome, 

Bore the selected spirits of the hour 
Safe to a distant immaterial home ? 

But in that patience was the seed of scorn, — 
Scorn of the world, and brotherhood of man ; 

Not patience, such as in the manger born, 
Up to the cross endured its earthly span. 

Thou must endure, yet loving all the while ; 

Above, yet never separate from thy kind ; 
Meet every frailty with a tender smile ; 

Though to no possible depth of evil blind. 

This is the riddle, thou hast life to solve ; 

And in the task thou shalt not work alone ; 
For while the worlds about the sun revolve, 

God's heart and mind are ever with his own. 

R. M. MlLNES. 



58 



SOLACE IN SORROW. 



VII. 

THE LAW OF CHANGE. 

While under heaven's warm evening hues 
They felt their eyes and bosoms glow, 

They learned how fondly fancy views 
Fair sights the moment ere they go ; 

And then, while earth was darkening o'er, 
While stars began their tranquil day, 

Rejoiced that Nature gives us more 
Than all it ever takes away. 

In earliest autumn's fading woods, 

Remote from eyes, they roamed at morn, 

And saw how Time transmuting broods 
O'er all that into Time is born. 

The power which men would fain forget — 
The law of change and slow decay — 

Came to them with a mild regret, 

A brightness veiled in softening gray. 

John Sterling. 



ELI. 

BY M. ATHANASE COQUEREL.^ 

Eli was judge and priest in Israel, but he had 
not availed himself of his peculiar advantages to 
give a holy and religious education to his children. 
He had neglected that solemn duty. Would God 
discharge it for him 1 Ought God repair his fault, 
teach these children what Eli had not taught them, 
and sanctify their hearts because Eli had left them 
to be corrupted ? 

What is the issue ? Hophni and Phinehas dis- 
honor the priesthood; they make it their means 
for more audacious crime ; they carry their impu- 
rity and profanity to the highest point. As judge, 
and as priest, Eli may check them by a double 
authority. Perhaps it is not too late ! A salutary 
firmness may call them back. May he not, if for 
once he will forget the father, forget his age, to 
be judge and high priest, — to be avenger of the 
national religion, — may he not put an end to their 
sin, by putting an end to these displays of it ? 

# One of the preachers of the Reformed Church at Paris. 



60 ELI. 

No ! He does not attempt it. He satisfies him- 
self with slightly blaming them, and gives no check 
to their dissipation. Again, do you ask God to 
interfere ? shall his providence stoop now to this 
duty? 

War broke out between the Philistines and 
the Hebrews. The Hebrews were once defeated, 
and their chiefs then ventured to take with them, 
into the battle-field, the sacred ark, till now invio- 
lable at Shiloh, in the sanctuary where it had been 
placed by Joshua. Thus they hoped to force the 
Eternal, as it were, to protect them. According 
to all the institutions ehd laws of Moses, this 
was the greatest sacrilege. Idolatry was scarcely 
worse. The very religion of Israel was connect- 
ed with this mysterious ark, which none dared 
to look into, and which served as the symbol of 
the presence of God. It might not be carried by 
any but priests ; — and Hophni and Phinehas, 
ready for any boldness of impiety, offered them- 
selves for this profanation. Eli, the weak Eli, 
who could not oppose them, sits sadly by the road- 
side waiting for news of the army. A messenger 
comes, and throws gloom over Shiloh ! He an- 
nounces that Israel is conquered ; that the ark is 



ELI. 



61 



captured ; that Hophni and Phinehas are slain. 
The old man, of almost a hundred years, hears 
this disaster as he would receive a bolt of thunder ; 
his strength leaves him, he sinks into the dust ; 
" his neck broke, and he died." The same news, 
announced at once to his daughter-in-law, causes 
yet another misfortune. The wife of Phinehas 
gives birth to a child, and his life costs the life of 
his mother. In vain those around would console 
her with those words so dear to a woman's ear : 
" Rejoice, for thou hast borne a son." No ! she 
cannot rejoice on a day so fatal ! The disasters 
of her family and her nation are greater than her 
maternal joy; she sees only that the glory of 
Israel is lost with the ark of the Lord ; she has 
only time to say, " Call the child Ichabod, for our 
glory is departed," and gives her last sigh on the 

cradle of her son. 

# # # # # 

Thus have I opened to you a sad but a useful 
subject of meditation and study. I have shown 
you the misery of a child ; and it sprang from his 
father ! What more than this can I say ? What 
can be added to such an example ? Thus is it that 
our sins bring consequences to our kindred, our 
6 



62 



ELI. 



friends, our neighbors ; — the bond which unites 
us all during life, and across death, is so close, 
that we cannot be sinners at our own cost alone, 
and that, to sin, we must wound even those whom 
we love the most. In that view how hideous does 
sin appear ! If by our faults and imprudences we 
only injured ourselves, if we only were lost, if 
our repose only were destroyed, only our fortune 
poisoned, every sinner might wrap himself in his 
selfishness and think only of his own future. But 
it is not so. He always wounds others ; strangers 
will suffer from his faults ; and tears will flow from 
other eyes than his, perhaps even before he weeps 
himself! What right, then, have we to give rein to 
our passions ; to expose the age of our parents and 
the youth of our children to bitter grief, and sow 
misery all around us in our transgressions ? We 
are responsible to God for the happiness of those 
who surround us, from the most intimate of 
our friends, to the most humble of our servants. 
Their lot is given to us to hold : a sacred trust, 
which is lost in the midst of our sins. I should not 
add to the solemnity of these thoughts by follow- 
ing them, from the disobedient child, whose mother 
weeps to see him, back to those persecutors 



ELI. G3 

who were so prodigal of martyrs, — those tyrants 
whose crime rests upon a nation ; those conquer- 
ors from whom a whole generation claims, as 
from Pharaoh, its lost first-born ! Everywhere 
man's happiness depends on man. Everywhere, 
for one offender, be sure that there are thousands 
who suffer. But the sufferings which he causes 
will fall back upon him, and his most poignant 
remorse will be the sight of the misery which he 
has created. 



ELI AND SAMUEL. 

And the word of the Lord was precious in those days ; there was no open vision. 
And it came to pass at that time, when Eli was laid down in his place, and his 
eyes began to wax dim, that he could not see ; and ere the lamp of God went out 
in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was, and Samuel was laid down 
to sleep ; that the Lord called Samuel. — 1 Samuel iii. 1 — 4. 

The open vision ceases from the land, 

God's word becomes more rare, and yet more 
rare ; 

Eli ! thine eyes wax dim ! — although thou stand 
In God's own house, thou dost not see Him 
there ! 

He speaks ! list, Eli, to the precious word ! 

Alas ! that word is not for such as thee ; 
Thy sealed ears no voice of God have heard — 

Thy sluggard eyes no open vision see. 
Wherefore should not the lamp of God burn out ? 

The seer of God is blind, and nothing sees ! 
Who shall light Israel through her clouds of doubt? 

Whom shall God call upon in nights like these ? 
The priest dreams still of earth ! Lo ! God has 
smiled 

And called — on one like heaven ; — a ministering 
Child. 



"AS A LITTLE CHILD/' 



"Thou must be born again !" O thou, whose 
voice 

In thunder tones would visit all the earth, 
In lightning words would preach this heavenly 
birth, 

So men may weep where most they shall rejoice, 
Go, go to Bethlehem ! and see the child 

New born, beneath its mother's beaming smile, — 

Look at thine own, and ponder there the while 
It laughs, for life alone exulting wild ! — 
That child, — it has no memory of wrong ; 

That child, — it fears not coming days of woe ; 

That child, — it knows not that days come or 
go; 

That child knows not that hours are short or long ! 
Better than thou to careworn, anxious men, 
That careless child will preach the " to be born 
again." 

6* 



"OF SUCH IS THE KINGDOM OF 
HEAVEN." 

BY REV. WILLIAM H. FTTRNESS. 

The resemblance which Christ points out be- 
tween the inhabitants of the heavenly kingdom, 
the everlasting world, and little children, is a mat- 
ter, not of fancy, but of fact. The theology which 
swathes man from his very birth in a total and 
hereditary corruption has hidden from us the un- 
earthly likeness which childhood wears. For my 
own part, receiving Christ as the teacher of eter- 
nal truth, I feel bound to look with reverence upon 
the young, if for no other reason than because I 
believe that he declared that " of such is the king- 
dom of heaven." Even though my dim eyes could 
trace no distinct resemblance between the dwellers 
in the kingdom of God and little children, I should 
believe, upon this great authority, that the resem- 
blance exists. But I can trace it distinctly enough 
to see, that, if we would learn what saints and 
angels are, we must study the young. Who is 
not ready to pardon the idolatry of the Roman 



6i OF SUCH IS THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN." 67 

Catholic Church, when he considers how, in bring- 
ing the warlike nations of Europe to bow before 
the image of the Virgin and her child, it breathed 
the holiest spirit of nature and of Christ, and 
taught those barbarous tribes to do homage to the 
purity of woman, to the divinity of parental love, 
and the angel innocence of infancy ? 

I would not make any indiscriminate claim for 
childhood. I do not deny that children do wrong, 
that they disregard and violate the plain convic- 
tions of their consciences, even as we do. But 
then their sins are manifestly the sins of healthy 
and most excellent natures ; and there is more of 
hope — there is less of guilt even — in their sins 
than there is in the artificial, boastful virtues of 
those who are their elders, and are falsely termed 
their betters. How artless is childhood even in its 
arts ! How transparent ! How easily seen through ! 
When wisely dealt with, children shed the purest 
tears of penitence that are ever shed on earth. 
And how full of trust is early childhood ! The 
child lives and moves and has its being in eternity. 
It knows nothing of the beginning of life, or of its 
ending. 



68 " OF SUCH IS THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN." 

" A simple child 
That lightly draws its breath, 
And feels its life in every limb, 
What can it know of death 1" 

" Over it immortality broods like the day." But, 
above all, how absolute and uncompromising and 
godlike is a child's sense of right ! He recognizes 
no limitations to the law of duty. He knows not 
policy, until he learns it from the evil practices of 
the world. Repeat to a child the immortal lessons 
of peace and love which Christ uttered, and he 
instantly recognizes the very commandments of 
God, and asks, " Why, then, do men go to war ? 
Why do they ill-treat and enslave one another?" 
With a terrible fidelity of application, he turns 
your instructions directly upon you, and demands, 
since such is God's law, why you do thus and 
so. Children cannot understand, until the world 
teaches them, how any necessity should interfere 
to render entire obedience impossible. 

In all these respects we may distinguish in them 
the features of a " race of heaven," and learn the 
deep significance of the command which requires 
us all to become like little children. Soon, very 



" OF SUCH IS THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN." 69 

soon, by our worldliness, by our cowardly com- 
promises, we drag them down from the lofty 
position which they occupy. Much as is said and 
done about the instruction, the moral and religious 
instruction, of the young, it seems to me some- 
times that the world is in nothing more busily 
engaged than in corrupting every child that comes 
into it. It compels the young to cast away as 
impracticable abstractions the plainest monitions 
of duty. It hides from them the wickedness of 
war by its vain talk about " famous victories." 
It dazzles their eyes with the gaudy trappings of 
the soldier. It hardens them to the deadly wrong 
which man inflicts on man, by pleading the way of 
the world, and a system of things which not God, 
but man, has devised. And so their wings are 
clipped, and they are made creatures of earth like 
ourselves. If we reverenced childhood as we 
should, if we distinguished in it the lineaments of 
the higher life, we should sit like children low at 
its feet, and the established relation of teachers 
and children would be reversed, and with the 
religious poet of our age, the parent would ex- 
claim to his child : — 



70 " OF SUCH IS THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN." 

" O dearest, dearest child, my heart 

For better lore would seldom yearn, 
Could I but teach the hundreth part 
Of what from thee I learn." 

As it is, amidst the thick steaming corruptions of 
the world, it is childhood that still keeps some 
sweetness in it. Though the young soon alight 
upon the earth, and become earthly like us, yet 
for a space they hover over us, like angelic minis- 
trants, fanning with white wings the fevered brain 
of many a sinning man and woman, and sending 
purifying beams of blessed light in upon our 
stained and hardened hearts. Even in their in- 
articulate helplessness, when they first make their 
appearance here, what springs of tenderness do 
they cause to break forth in human bosoms ! 
How mighty is their coming ! Like the angel at 
Bethesda, they stir the fountain of life, dark with 
the surrounding shadows of sin, and instantly it 
receives a healing efficacy. Whether they come 
or depart, their ministry is alike powerful. Their 
departure, like their coming, sheds a celestial 
influence through the whole household, like the 
broken box of precious perfume poured by Mary 



" OF SUCH IS THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN." 71 

upon the head of Jesus. Said not Christ truly, 
" Of such is the kingdom of heaven V Is not the 
resemblance here indicated existing in the reality 

of things ? 

# # # * 

Faith is the characteristic of childhood and 
youth. So congenial is it to a child's nature to 
cherish trust, to bestow confidence, so ready is he 
to listen to all sounds as to true voices, that, if we 
supposed he had come into this world from a pre- 
existent state, we should infer that he had lived in 
a world of perfect truth. " Heaven lies about us 
in our infancy.' , The mind of the young child 
appears to live and move and have its being, all 
unconsciously, in those truths which the man is 
toiling almost hopelessly to find. They brood over 
it " like the day ;" and although the corrupting il- 
lusions of sense fast, very fast, close us round, and 
the heavy yoke of custom bows us down, and we 
daily travel further from the east, yet something 
of the child's heart stays with us to the end, amidst 
the thickening clouds of pride and sin. 

" O joy ! that in our embers 
Is something that doth live, 



72 " OF SUCH IS THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN." 

That nature yet remembers 
What was so fugitive ! " 

Had the deep articulate meaning of the immortal 
ode, from which I quote, reached our inner sense, 
were it something more to us than the faint music 
of a distant angel, we should be prepared to re- 
ceive the full significance of the words of Jesus. 



THE MOTHER AND HER CHILD. 



FROM HERDER. 

Among green pleasant meadows, 

All in a grove so wild, 
Was set a marble image 

Of the Virgin and her child ; 
There oft, on summer evenings, 

A lovely boy would rove, 
To play beside the image 

That sanctified the grove. 
Oft sat his mother by him, 

Among the shadows dim, 
And told how the Lord Jesus 

Was once a child like him ; 
"And now from highest heaven 

He doth look down each day, 
And sees whate'er thou doest, 

And hears what thou dost say." 

Thus spoke that tender mother ; 

And on an evening bright, 
When the red, round sun descended 

Mid clouds of crimson light, 
7 



THE MOTHER AND HER CHILD. 



Again the boy was playing, 

And earnestly said he, — 
" Oh, beautiful child-Jesus, 

Come down and play with me ! 
I will find thee flowers the fairest, 

And weave for thee a crown, 
I will cull thee red, ripe strawberries, 

If thou wilt but come down; 
Oh holy, holy mother ! 

Put him from off thy knee, 
For in these silent meadows 

There is none to play with me ! " 

Thus spoke that boy so lovely, 

The while his mother heard, 
And on his prayer she pondered, 

But spoke to him no word. 
That very night she dreamed 

A lovely dream of joy, 
She thought she saw young Jesus 

There playing with her boy. — 
" And for the fruits and flowers 

Which thou hast brought to me, 
Rich blessings shall be given 

An hundred-fold to thee ; 



THE MOTHER AND HER CHILD. 

For in the fields of heaven 

Thou shalt roam with me at will, 

And of bright flowers celestial 

Thou shalt have, dear child, thy fill." 

Thus tenderly and kindly 

The fair child Jesus spoke, 
And full of anxious musings 

The careful mother woke. 
And thus it was accomplished : — 

In a short month and a day, 
That lovely boy so gentle 

Upon his death-bed lay ; 
And thus he spoke in dying, — 

" Oh mother, dear ! I see 
The beautiful child-Jesus 

Descending unto me ; — 
And in his hand he beareth 

Bright flowers, white as snow, 
And red and dewy strawberries, 

Dear mother ! let me go ! " 
He died, — but that fond mother 

Her sorrow did restrain, 
For she knew he was with Jesus, 

And she asked him not again. 



THE NEW BIRTH. 

BY JONES VERY. 

'T is a new life ; — thoughts move not as they did, 
With slow uncertain steps, across my mind ; 
In thronging haste fast pressing on, they bid 
The portals open to the viewless wind, 
That comes not save when in the dust is laid 
The crown of pride that gilds each mortal brow, 
And from before man's vision melting fade 
The heavens and earth ; — their walls are falling 
now. 

Fast crowding on, each thought asks utterance 
strong ; 

Storm-lifted waves swift rushing to the shore, 
On from the sea they send their shouts along, 
Back through the cave-worn rocks their thunders 
roar ; 

And I, a child of God by Christ made free, 
Start from death's slumbers to Eternity. 



TRUTH ALMIGHTY. 
To . 

BY AUBREY DE VERE. 

Range all the Virtues van-ward in your band ; 
To these the helm, the spear, the sword, be given ! 
True priests, true patriots, to the mountains driven, 
Fight not yourselves, and fear not for the land. 
He who hath touched a truth hath laid his hand 
On that which moves the poles of earth and 
heaven. 

Speak, then, and wait : too rash was Moses' wand 
That smote the rock his word alone had riven ! 
Truth without Love is worse than heresy : 
Therefore call no man heretic : beware : 
On Faith's high mountains raise your hands in 
prayer ; 

And sound God's trumpet. Know, if none reply, — 

If truth and wisdom access find to none,— 

Know this, and make it known, that ye your parts 

have done. 

7 * 



THE DROP OF DEW. 



BY ANDREW MARVELL. 

Seest thou the orient dew 
Shed from the bosom of the morn 
Into the blooming roses, 
Yet careless of its mansion new, 
For the clear region where 't was born 

Round in itself encloses ; 
And in its little globe's extent 
Frames as it can its native element. 

How it the purple flower doth plight, 
Scarce touching where it lies : 
But gazing back upon the skies, 

Shines with a mournful light, 
Like its own tear. 

Because so long divided from its sphere. 

Restless it rolls, and insecure, 
Trembling lest it grow impure, 
Till the warm sun pities its pain, 
And to the stars exhales it back again. 



THE DROP OF DEW. 



79 



So the soul, that drop, that ray 

From the clear fountain of eternal day, 

Could it within the human flower be seen, 

Remembering still its former height, 
Does in its pure and circling thoughts express 
The greater heaven in the heaven less. 



REMEMBER THE THINGS OF OLD. 

THE SEVEN SLEEPERS. 

BY REV. JAMES MARTINEAU. 

The fictions of popular piety are usually incon- 
stant and local. But there is a legend of the early 
Christianity, whose ready acceptance within a few 
years of its origin is not less remarkable than its 
wide diffusion through every country from the 
Ganges to the Thames ; — a legend which has 
spread over West and East from the centres of 
Rome and Byzantium : which you may hear in 
Russia or in Abyssinia ; and which, having seized 
on the ardent fancy of Mohammed, is found in the 
Koran, and is as familiar to* the Arab and the 
Moor as to the Spaniard and the Greek. 

In the middle of the fifth century, the resident 
proprietor of an estate near Ephesus was in want 
of building-stone to raise some cottages and gran- 
aries on his farm. His fields sloped up the side 
of a mountain, in which he directed his slaves to 
open a quarry. In obeying his orders they found 
a spacious cavern, whose mouth was blocked up 



THE SEVEN SLEEPERS. 



81 



with masses of rock artificially piled. On remov- 
ing these, they were startled by a dog, suddenly 
leaping up from the interior. Venturing further 
in, to a spot on which the sunshine, no longer ex- 
cluded, directly fell, they discovered, just turning 
as from sleep, and dazzled with the light, seven 
young men, of dress and aspect so strange, that 
the slaves were terrified, and fled. The slumber- 
ers, on rising, found themselves ready for a meal ; 
and, the cave being open, one of them set out for 
the city, to buy food. On his way through the 
familiar country, (for he was a native of Ephesus,) 
a thousand surprises struck him. The road over 
which yesterday's persecution had driven him was 
turned ; the landmarks seemed shifted, and gave a 
twisted pattern to the fields : on the green meadow 
of the Cayster had sprung up a circus and a mill. 
Two soldiers were seen approaching in the dis- 
tance : hiding himself till they were past, lest they 
should be emissaries of imperial intolerance, he 
observed that the accoutrements were fantastic, 
the emblems of Decius were not there, the words 
that dropped from their talk were in a strange 
dialect, and in their friendly company was a 
Christian presbyter. From a rising ground, he 



82 



THE SEVEN SLEEPERS. 



looked down the river to the base of Diana's hill ; 
and lo ! the great temple, — the world-wide won- 
der, — was nowhere to be seen. Arrived at the 
city, he found its grand gate surmounted by a 
cross. In the streets, rolling with new-shaped 
vehicles, filled with theatrical looking people, the 
very noises seemed to make a foreign hum. He 
could suppose himself in a city of dreams, only 
that here and there appeared a house, all whose 
rooms within he certainly knew ; with an aspect, 
however, among the rest, curiously dull and dwin- 
dled, as in a new window looks an old pane pre- 
served for some line scratched by poet or by sage. 
Before his errand is quite forgot, he enters a 
bread-shop to make his purchase ; offers the silver 
coin of Decius in payment ; when the baker, whose 
astonishment was already manifest enough, can 
restrain his suspicions no longer, but arrests his 
customer as the owner of unlawful treasure, and 
hurries him before the city court. There he tells 
his tale : that with his Christian companions he 
had taken refuge in the cave from the horrors of 
the Decian persecution ; had been pursued thither, 
and built in for a cruel death ; had fallen asleep 
till wakened by the returning sun, let in again by 



THE SEVEN SLEEPERS. 



83 



some friendly and unhoped-for hand; and crept 
back into the town to procure support for life in 
their retreat. And there, too, in reply, he hears a 
part of the history which he cannot tell : that De- 
cius had been dethroned by death nearly two 
centuries ago, and Paganism by the Truth full 
one : that, while heaven has wrapped him in mys- 
terious sleep, the earth's face, in its features, phy- 
sical and moral, had been changed ; that empire 
had shifted its seat from the Tiber to the Bos- 
phorus : that the Temple had yielded to the 
Church ; the demons of mythology to the saints 
and martyrs of Christendom ; and that he who had 
quitted the city in the third century, returned to it 
in the fifth, and stood under the Christian protec- 
tion of the second Theodosius. It is added, that 
the Ephesian clergy and their people were con- 
ducted by the confessor to the cave, exchanging 
wonders as they conversed by the way ; and that 
the seven sleepers, having attested in their per- 
sons the preserving hand of God, and re-told the 
story of their life, and heard snatches of the news 
of nearly two hundred years, gave their parting 
blessing to the multitude, and sank in the silence 
of natural death. 



84 



THE SEVEN SLEEPERS. 



For the purpose of mental experiment, fable is 
as good as fact. To reveal our nature to itself, 
it is often more effectual for the imagination to go 
out upon a fiction, than for the memory to absorb 
a chronicle. When the citizens and the sleepers 
met, each was awe-struck at the other ; yet no one 
had been conscious of anything awful in himself. 
The youths, startled by the police of Paganism, 
had risen up from dinner, leaving their wine un- 
tasted : and on arriving breathless at their retreat, 
laid themselves down, dusty, weary, ordinary crea- 
tures enough. They resume the thread of being 
where it hung suspended ; and are greeted every- 
where with the uplifted hands and shrinking touch 
of devout amazement. And the busy Ephesians 
had dressed themselves that morning, and swept 
their shops, and run down to the office and the 
dock, with no idea that they were not the most 
commonplace of mortals, pushing through a toil- 
some and sultry career. They are stopped mid-day 
to be assured, that their familiar life is an incred- 
ible romance ; that their city is steeped in vision- 
ary tints, and they themselves are as moving ap- 
paritions. And they are told this, when they can- 
not laugh at it, or brush it, like Sunday memories, 



THE SEVEN SLEEPERS. 85 

away. For who are they that say such things, 
gazing into them with full deep eyes ? Counter 
parts in their looks of all the marvels they profess 
to see ; — proofs that the old, dead times were 
once alive, warm with young passions, noble with 
young faith ; astir with limbs that could be weary, 
and hiding sorrows whose sob and cry might be 
overheard. Would not the men, returning to their 
homes, be conscious of understanding life anew ? 
Would they not look down upon their children, 
and up at the portraits of their ancestors, with a 
perception from which a cloud had cleared away ? 
Would the fashion of the drawing-room, the con- 
vention of the club, the gossip of the exchange, 
retain all their absorbing interest ; and the wrest- 
lings of doubt and duty, the sighs of reason, the 
conflicts of affection, the nearness of God, spoken 
of by prophets in the trance of inspiration, and 
the Church in its prayer of faith, appear any more 
as idle words ? No ; the revelation of a reality in 
the past would produce the feeling of an unreal- 
ity in the present. Many invisible things would 
shape themselves forth, as with a solid surface, 
reflecting the heavenly light, and sleeping in the 
colors of pure truth : many visible things would 
8 



86 



THE SEVEN SLEEPERS. 



melt in films away, and retreat like the escaping 
vista of a dream. When the people's anthem 
went up on the Sabbath morning, " Oh God of 
our fathers!" that grave, historic cry would not 
seem to set his spirit far, but to bring it overhang- 
ing through the very spaces of the dome above. 
When the holy martyrs were named with the glory 
of an affectionate praise, their silent forms would 
seem to group themselves meekly round. And 
when the upper life of saints and sages, — of suf- 
fering taken in its patience and goodness in its 
prime, of the faithful parent and the Christ-like 
child, — was mentioned with a modest hope, it 
would appear no fabled island, for which the eye 
might stretch across the sea in vain, but a visible 
range of everlasting hills, whose outline of awful 
beauty is already steadfast above the deep. 

Now, whence would spring an influence like 
this ? What source must we assign to the power 
which such an incident would have exerted over its 
witnesses ? The essence of it is simply this ; the 
Past stood up in the face of the Present, and 
spake with it, and they found each other out : and 
each learned, that he beheld the other with true 
eye, and himself with false. The lesson is not set 



THE SEVEN SLEEPERS. 



87 



beyond our reach. No miracle indeed is sent to 
teach it ; no grotesque extracts from bygone cen- 
turies walk about among us. But our ties with 
other days are not broken ; fragments of them 
stand around us ; notices of them lie before us. 
The recesses of time are not hopelessly dark ; 
opened by the hand of labor, and penetrated by 
the light of reason, their sleeping forms will rise 
and re-enter our living world, and in showing us 
what they have been, disclose to us what we are. 
The legendary youths are but the impersonations 
of history : and their visit to the Ephesians, but a 
parable of the relation between historical percep- 
tion and religious faith. 

The great end, yet the great difficulty, of reli- 
gion is, so to analyze our existence for us as 
to distinguish its essential spirit from its casual 
forms, the real from the apparent, the transient 
from the eternal.* Experience mixes thern all up 
together, and arranges nothing according to its 
worth. The dress that clothes the body, and the 
body that clothes the soul, appear in such invari- 
able conjunction, and become so much the signs 
of one another, that all run into one object, and 
tempt us to exaggerate the trivial and depreciate 



88 



THE SEVEN SLEEPERS. 



the great. That which a man has, and that which 
he is, move about together, and live in the same 
house ; till our fancy and our faith grow too indo- 
lent to separate them ; we fasten him to his pos- 
sessions, and when they are dropped in death, think 
that he is gone to nought. It is the business of 
faith to see all things in their intrinsic value : it is 
the work of experience to thrust them on us in 
accidental combinations : and hence the flattening, 
sceptical, blinding influence of a passive and un- 
resisted experience. Hence it is that time is apt 
to take away a truth for each one that he gives, 
and rather to change our wisdom than to increase 
it : and while foresight assuredly comes to the 
man, insight will often tarry with the child. When 
the eye first looks on life, it is not to study its 
successions, but to rest upon its picture : its love- 
liness is discerned before its order : its aspect is 
interpreted, while its policy is* quite unknown. 
Our early years gaze on all things through the 
natural glass of beauty and affection, which in 
religion is the instrument of truth. But soon it 
gets dimmed by the breath of usage, which ad- 
heres to all except natures the most pure and fine : 
and a cold cloud darkens the whole universe 



THE SEVEN SLEEPERS. 



89 



before us. Day by day, the understanding sees 
more, the imagination less, in the scene around 
us ; till it seems all made up of soil to grow our 
bread, and clay to build our house : and we become 
impatient, if any one pretends to find in it the 
depth which its atmosphere has lost to us, and the 
grandeur which has faded from our view. We 
dwell in this world, like dull serfs in an Alpine 
land ; who are attached indeed to their home with 
the strong instincts of men cut off from much in- 
tercourse with their kind, and whose passions, 
wanting diffusion, acquire a local intensity ; who 
therefore sigh in absence for their mountains, as 
the Arab for his desert ; but in whom there is no 
sense of the glories amid which they live ; who 
wonder what the traveller comes to see; who, in 
the valleys closed by the glacier, and echoing 
# with the torrent, observe only the timber for their 
fuel, and the paddock for their kine. We are 
often the last to see how noble are our opportuni- 
ties, to feel how inspiring the voices that call us 
to high duties and productive sacrifice : and while 
we loiter on in the track of drowsy habit, esteem- 
ing our lot common and profane, better hearts are 
looking on, burning within them to stand on the 
8* 



90 



THE SEVEN SLEEPERS. 



spot where we stand, to seize its hopes, and be 
true to all its sacredness. It is an abuse of the 
blessings of experience, when it thus stupefies u§ 
with its benumbing touch, and in teaching us a 
human lesson, persuades us to unlearn a divine. 
The great use of custom is to teach us what to 
expect, to familiarize us with the order of events 
from day to day, that we may compute our way 
aright, and know how to rule whatever lies be- 
neath our hand. This is the true school for the 
active, working will. But for the thoughtful, 
wondering affections, a higher discipline is need- 
ed ; an excursion beyond the limits where the 
senses stop, into regions where usage, breathless 
and exhausted, drops behind: where the beaten 
ways of expectation disappear, and we must find 
the sun-path of faith and reason, or else be lost. 
Only by baffled anticipation do we learn to re- 
vere what is above our hand: and custom must 
break in pieces before us, if we are to keep right 
the everlasting love within us, as well as the 
transient life without. Surrendering itself to 
habit alone, the mind takes step by step right on, 
intent on the narrow strip of its own time, and 
seeing nothing but its linear direction. But 



THE SEVEN SLEEPERS. 91 

brought to the untrodden mountain-side, it is 
arrested by the open ground, and challenged by 
^he very silence, and compelled to look abroad in 
space, and see the fresh, wide world of God ; 
where all roads have vanished, except the ele- 
mental highways of nature, — the sweep of storm- 
felled pines, and the waving line where melted 
waters flow. Now, in shaking off the heavy 
dreams of custom, and waking us up from the 
swoon so fatal to piety, religion receives the 
greatest aid from history : and though they seemed 
to be engaged in opposite offices, they only divide 
between them the very same. Religion strips the 
costume from the life that is : History restores 
the costume to the life that was : and by this 
double action we learn to feel sensibly, where the 
mere dress ends, and the true life begins ; how 
much thievish time may steal, and corroding age 
reduce to dross ; and what treasure there is which 
no thief approacheth or moth corrupteth. Those 
who are shut up in the present, either by involun- 
tary ignorance, or by voluntary devotion to its 
immediate interests, contract a certain slowness 
of imagination, most fatal both to wisdom and to 
faith. Restrained in every direction by aggluti- 



92 THE SEVEN SLEEPERS. 

nation to the type of personal experience, their 
thought cannot pass beyond vulgar and material 
rules ; cannot believe in any aspect of existence 
much different from things as they are ; in any 
beings far removed from those that walk the 
streets to-day ; in any events that would look 
absurd in the newspaper, or affect sagacious poli- 
ticians with serious surprise. Their feeling can 
make nothing of the distinction between the mor- 
tal and the immortal, the spirit and the form of 
things. If they moralize on human affairs, it is 
only to say one of the two things which, since 
the days of Ecclesiastes, have always fallen from 
Epicurism in its sentimental mood : that all things 
continue as they were, and there can be nothing 
new under the sun ; or that nothing can continue 
as it is, and all that is sublunary passes as the 
shadow ; and as this dieth, so dieth that. A mind 
rich in the past is protected against these mean 
falsehoods ; can discriminate the mutable social 
forms from that permanent humanity, of whose 
affections, whose struggles, whose aspirations, 
whose Providential course, history is the impres- 
sive record ; and thus trained, finds it easy to cast 
an eye of faith upon the living world, and discern 



THE SEVEN SLEEPERS. 



93 



the soul of individuals and of communities beneath 
the visible disguise, so deceitful to the shallow, so 
suggestive to the wise. The habit of realizing 
the past is essential to that of idealizing the 
present. 

But, besides this general affinity between his- 
torical thought and the religious temper, a more 
direct influence of knowledge upon faith is not 
difficult to trace. The great objects of our belief 
and trust cannot be conceived of, except in the 
poorest and faintest way, where all is blank 
beyond mere personal experience. A man to 
whom the present is the only illuminated spot, 
closely pressed in upon by outlying darkness all 
around, will vainly strive to meditate, for example, 
on the eternity of God. What sort of helpless 
attempt even can he make towards such a thing ? 
He knows the measure of an hour, a day, a year : 
and these he may try to multiply without end, to 
stretch along the line of the infinite life. But this 
numerical operation carries no impression : it has 
no more religion in it than any other long sum. 
The mere vacant arithmetic of duration travels 
ineffectually on ; glides through without contact 
with the living God ; and gives only the chill of 



94 



THE SEVEN SLEEPERS. 



a void loneliness. Time, like space, cannot be 
appreciated by merely looking into it. As in the 
desert, stretching its dreary dust to the horizon, 
all dimensions are lost in the shadowless sun- 
shine ; so, over a mere waste of years, the fancy 
strains itself only to turn dizzy. As, in the one, 
we want objects to mark the retreating distance, 
the rising spire, the sheltered green, the swelling 
light on headland slope ; so in the other, we need 
visible events standing off from view to make us 
aware of the great perspective. And for the 
ends of faith, they must be moral vicissitudes, 
the deeply-colored incidents of human life : or, 
the vastness which we see we shall not love : we 
shall traverse the infinite, and never worship. 
Science, as well as history, has its past to 
show: — a past, indeed, much larger; running, 
with huge strides, deep into the old eternity. 
But its immensity is dynamical, not divine : 
gigantesque, not holy: opening to us the monot- 
onous perseverance of physical forces, not the va- 
rious struggles and sorrows of free will. And 
though sometimes, on passing from the turmoil 
of the city, and the heats of restless life, into 
the open temple of the silent universe, we are 



THE SEVEN SLEEPERS. 



95 



tempted to think, that there is the taint of earth, 
and here the purity of heaven ; yet sure it is, that 
God is seen by us through man, rather than 
through nature : and that without the eye of our 
brother, and the voices of our kind, the winds 
might sigh, and the stars look down on us in 
vain. Nor is the Christian conception of the 
second and higher existence of man heartily pos- 
sible to those who are shut out from a]J historic 
retrospect. At least, the idea of other nations 
and other times, the mental picture of memorable 
groups that have passed away ; the lingering 
voices of poets, heroes, saints, floating on the ear 
of thought ; are a great, if not an indispensable 
aid to that hope of the future, which can scarcely 
maintain itself without attendant images. That 
old, distant, venerable earth of ours, with its quaint 
people, lies silent in the remote places of our 
thought ; and is not so far from the scene of 
scarcely more mysterious life, where all now abide 
with God: the same perspective embraces them 
both ; it is but the glance of an eye from below to 
above : and as the past reality of the one does not 
prevent its being now ideal, so the present ideality 
of the other is no hindrance to its reality. The 



96 



THE SEVEN SLEEPERS. 



two states, — that in the picture of history, and 
that on the map of faith, — recede almost equally 
from our immediate experience : and the concep- 
tion of the one is a sensible help to the realization 
of the other. Indeed there is not a truth of 
religion in reference to the future and the unseen 
which the knowledge of the past does not bring 
nearer to our minds. And when we invoke this 
aid to faith, we give it an ally, not, as might seem, 
accessible to learning only, but singularly open to 
the resources of ordinary men. Happily, the very 
fountains and depositories of our religion are his- 
torical ; and records of human affairs, not theories 
of physical nature, are supplied in the sacred 
writings, from which we learn the lessons of Prov- 
idence. Apart from all questions of inspiration, 
there is no grander agent than the Bible in this 
world. It has opened the devout and fervid East 
to the wonder and affection of the severer West. 
It has made old Egypt and Assyria more familiar 
to Christendom than its own lands : and to our 
people at large, the Pharaohs are less strange 
than the Plantagenets, and Abraham is more dis- 
tinct than Alfred. The Hebrew prophet finds 
himself in the presence of the English tradesman, 



THE SEVEN SLEEPERS. 97 

or domesticated in the Scotch village ; and is bet- 
ter understood when he speaks of Jordan, than 
the poet at home who celebrates the Greta or the 
Yarrow. Scenes of beauty, pictures of life, rise 
on the people's thought across the interval of cen- 
turies and continents. Pity and terror, sympathy 
and indignation, fly over vast reaches of time, and 
alight on many a spot else unclaimed by our hu- 
manity, and unconsecrated by the presence of our 
God. It is a discipline of priceless value ; secur- 
ing for the general mind materials of thought and 
faith most rich and varied ; and breaking that 
servile sleep of custom which is the worst foe of 
true belief and noble hope. From the exten- 
sion of such discipline, according to opportunity, 
whosoever is vigilant to keep a living faith, will 
draw ever fresh stores ; and, that he may better 
dwell in heart with Him " who declareth the end 
from the beginning,' , will " remember the former 
things of old." 

9 



THE SPIRIT LAND. 

BY JONES VERY. 

Father ! thy wonders do not singly stand, 

Nor far removed where feet have seldom strayed ; 

Around us ever lies the enchanted land 

In marvels rich to thine own sons displayed ; 

In finding thee are all things round us found ; 

In losing thee are all things lost beside ; 

Ears have we but in vain strange voices sound, 

And to our eyes the vision is denied ; 

We wander in the country far remote, 

Mid tombs and ruined piles in death to dwell ; 

Or on the records of past greatness doat, 

And for a buried soul the living sell ; 

While on our path bewildered falls the night 

That ne'er returns us to the fields of light. 



THE HARP OF DAVID. 

BY LORD BYRON. 

The harp the monarch minstrel swept, — 
The king of men, the loved of heaven, 

Which Music hallowed, while she wept 
O'er tones her heart of hearts had given, — 
Redoubled be her tears, — its chords are riven ! 

It softened men of iron mould, 

It gave them virtues not their own ; 

No ear so dull, no soul so cold, 
That felt not, fired not, to the tone, 
Till David's lyre grew mightier than his throne ! 

It told the triumphs of our king, 

It wafted glory to our God : 
It made our gladdened valleys ring, 

The cedars bow, the mountains nod ; 

Its sound aspired to heaven, and there abode ! 
Since then, though heard on earth no more, 

Devotion and her daughter Love 
Still bid the bursting spirit soar 

To sounds that seem as from above, 

In dreams that day's broad light can not remove. 



HEBREW POETRY. 



BY KEV. LEONARD WITHINGTON. 

" I love to breathe where Gilead sheds her balm ; 
I love to walk on Jordan's banks of palm ; 
I love to wet my foot in Hermon's dews ; 
I love the promptings of Isaiah's muse : 
In Carmel's holy grots I '11 court repose, 
And deck my mossy couch with Sharon's deathless rose." 

Pierpont's Airs of Palestine. 

" But those frequent songs throughout the law and prophets, beyond all these, 
not in their divine argument alone, but in the very critical art of composition, may 
be easily made to appear, over all the kinds of lyric poesy, to be incomparable." 

Milton. 

The Jews were a peculiar people ; and their 
poetry is as peculiar. It was made the vehicle of 
teaching them the most awful truths : because, 
when God speaks to men he uses the language 
of men. Truth itself may bear a majesty suita- 
ble to the mind from which it originated ; but its 
garb must be as humble as the minds to which 
it is addressed. 

In speaking, however, of the poetry of the 
Hebrews, we shall say nothing of that Supreme 
Mind from which it is believed to have origi- 
nated ; we shall not assume, as the ground of our 
remarks, the inspiration of the Scriptures. We 



HEBREW POETRY. 



101 



believe, with Lowth and others, that, however 
infallible the oracles which the Hebrew prophet 
delivered, and in whatever way we explain the di- 
vine superintendence which guided their thoughts, 
each author was left to the play of his own genius, 
and reflects the manners of his own nation and 
age. We leave to the divine the sublime themes 
of theology ; we shall consider Hebrew poetry as 
an effort of Hebrew genius ; and we shall endeav- 
or to compare its relative merits with the poetry 
of the west. 

The waters of the Hellespont, except a few 
Greeks on the shores of Asia Minor, have always 
divided a people very different in their tastes and 
manners. We allude not now to the enterprise, 
the liberty, the hardihood of the Greeks, and the 
tyranny and effeminacy of the Asiatic nations. 
These are the effects of the relative states of 
empires ; and the first Cyrus, who founded the 
Persian dynasty, was as great a warrior as Alex- 
ander, who conquered the last of his degenerate 
successors ; he, perhaps, commanded an army of 
equal heroes. The permanent difference is, in 
their literary tastes. On the eastern side of the 
Hellespont, we find hereditary dogmas never dis- 
9* 



102 



HEBREW POETRY. 



puted; a fixed philosophy; great authority, and 
great credulity; morality taught in apologues, sen- 
tences and aphorisms ; and in poetry, the wildest 
flights of enthusiasm, rapid transitions, bold per- 
sonifications ; the very language destitute of those 
particles (the last invention of acuteness) which 
mark the slender shades and turnings of a finer 
mind. On the western side we find all these 
things reversed. Whatever may have been the 
cause, whether it was, as Diodorus says, because 
their philosophers taught for reward, 

sgyoXaptav xegdst owxatffievoi,, Or, SUch WaS the bent of 

nature, they questioned everything ; supported 
their discourses by proofs, and not by authority ; 
gave us their systems in connected discourses, 
and even in poetry taught us to reason, while they 
compelled us to feel. The European nations 
have inherited the taste of the Greeks ; their 
language is formed on the basis of the Greek 
tongue ; and had it not been that the Bible, by 
being translated, has preserved among us some 
elements of orientalism, we should this day 
scarcely be capable of holding intercourse with 
more than half our race. The most literal trans- 
lations would only throw darkness over the most 
beautiful page. 



HEBREW POETRY. 



103 



The Hebrew nation have for ages been remark- 
able for anything rather than delicacy or refine- 
ment. We cannot conceive of a race of bipeds, 
more coarse, more callous, more boobyish, more 
trifling, than the whole race of Jewish literati, 
into whose hands the Scriptures have fallen. The 
Bible, with its native commentators around it, is 
like one of its own islands in the Babylonian 
desert ; you pass over the blazing sand beneath 
the burning sun, before you reach the grateful 
shades, and the bubbling spring. But because 
this peculiar nation have shrivelled in captivity 
we must not suppose that they were destitute of 
genius when they flourished in their glory. We 
might as well take a degenerate Roman, as he 
was described by the Goths, as a semblance 
of Cicero, as to judge of an ancient Jew by one 
of the Masorites. The minds of most men sink 
to the level of the estimation in which they are 
held. The despised man becomes despicable ; 
the slave assumes a servile mind. Judea was 
once the seat of empire and glory. She had her 
city, her king, and her temple. She had all that 
expansive power which the mind feels when left 
to an open career. Her sons mounted up on 



104 



HEBREW POETRY. 



wings like eagles ; they ran and were not weary, 
they walked and were not faint. Then the archi- 
tect labored, the warrior triumphed, and the poet 
sung. If she rivalled not some other nations in 
refinement, one excellence no one can deny her 
bards ; and that is this — they are always idiom- 
atic; they have qualities and beauties pre-emin- 
ently their own. 

No man can have read the prophets with at- 
tention, without observing that one of their chief 
charms is — they are exquisitely oriental. They 
write with a mode of thought, and a mode of con- 
necting their thoughts, and with allusions, wholly 
impossible but to one placed on the spot. If a 
reader approaches the Hebrew poets with a stand- 
ard formed in modern times, he will be greatly 
disappointed. Much has been said of the beauties 
of the Bible ; nor are we aware that its beauties 
have been overrated. But, loosely declaiming on 
the beauties of the Bible, some fond critics have 
laid a snare for the reader's dissent. The Bible 
is beautiful, like most other primitive books, in its 
own peculiar style of beauty. It has those very 
beauties which a nascent age produces, and of 
which its sacred subjects are susceptible. It can- 



HEBREW POETRY. 105 

not combine those artful images which are the 
invention of later ages ; it cannot sympathize with 
the voluptuary at his bowls, or the warrior on the 
field of battle ; it cannot introduce the lover, pour- 
ing out vows to his mistress ; nor surround the 
trifles of life with the mythology of gods or fairies. 
It cannot address our imagination on the inflam- 
mable side of passion, or lead us through descrip- 
tions which pamper the heart. All these ends, 
the awful severity of its subjects refuses. But its 
beauties are the fruits of its theme. They are 
flowers of its own soil. They are implements to 
impress its own lessons. They are pictures of 
the age, and the men, and the subject. Passing 
from such a writer as Thomas Moore, for example, 
to the Bible, there is an amazing contrast; and 
the reader who has melted at the tawdry senti- 
mentalisms of the Irish bard (not without his 
beauties, we confess) would at first be shocked at 
the stern simplicity of Ezekiel or Isaiah. But 
has the Bible therefore no beauties ? Must every 
subject be ornamented alike? Must a colossal 
statue have the coloring of a miniature picture? 
It was no more to be expected that the Bible 
should have these modern manners, than that the 



106 



HEBREW POETRY. 



Jordan or the Euphrates should reflect the trees 
or the shrubbery on the banks of the Ohio or the 
Tweed. 

One of the pleasures of poetry is the skill and 
facility with which the author overcomes certain 
difficulties which the rules of the art impose upon 
him. It is not copying nature, or painting the 
passions solely, which gives us delight ; but it is 
the adroitness with which these things are done, 
though the work was hampered by certain laws. 
In certain kinds of verse, this is the chief pleas- 
ure. It is peculiarly so in the Spenserian stan- 
za, and in the sonnet ; and in those artful invo- 
lutions and balanced periods which some writers 
use. For example, in these lines, in Pope's 
Windsor Forest, which he has copied from 
Ovid : — 

" Not half so swift the trembling doves can fly, 
When the fierce eagle cleaves the liquid sky ; 
Not half so swiftly the fierce eagle moves, 
When through the clouds he drives the trem- 
bling doves." 

In this case, we admire not only the smooth 
versification, and the beautiful image, but the art 



HEBREW POETRY. 



107 



with which the poet has involved his eagles and 
doves in the melodious illustration. The above 
is not, perhaps, the highest beauty ; it lacks sim- 
plicity, and is perfectly Ovidian. Nevertheless, 
in the simplest poetry of Cowper and Milton, 
there is a secret reference to the difficulties over- 
come ; and we never should admire nature or 
passion in poetry, (for these may exist in prose,) 
were there not a secret reference to the skill of 
the poet. In easy poetry, we admire that the 
bard can be so easy under so many restraints. 

At first view, it might be supposed that there 
was very little of this beauty among the Hebrew 
bards. Nothing can be more simple than the 
structure of their sentences ; they have neither 
measure nor rhyme. They have only to pour out 
their rhapsodies ; to communicate their feelings, 
and be admired. They have only to indulge in 
the rantings of Macpherson, who has passed for 
Ossian ; — 

" — per audaces nova dithyrambos 
Verba devolvit, numerisque fertur 
Lege solutis. 

They may have the praise of simplicity, but can- 
not aspire to the victories of art ; and yet, I hope 



108 



HEBREW POETRY. 



to show that a conquest over difficulties is one of 
the chief beauties of their admirable odes. 

The Hebrew is one of the most material lan- 
guages ever spoken. There is hardly an abstract 
term in its whole vocabulary. In its entire form- 
ation, it seems to be made by a people who 
were as far from spiritual ideas as we can pos- 
sibly conceive. It has no tenses, (those which 
have been called past and future are certainly 
aorists ;) no scientific or scholastic terms ; no par- 
ticles to express the nicest transitions of thought ; 
very few adjectives, very few intellectual expres- 
sions of any kind. Almost all its words which 
express mental operations are material in their 
origin. Let us mention a few instances, without 
the formality of quoting the original. The word 
to judge comes from the word causative of to 
cut, I seem to see a tribe of primitive hunters, 
who, having run down and taken a deer, appoint 
one of the wisest of their number, to cause it to 
be cut up into equal portions ; and thus comes the 
idea of judging. The word to mourn, comes 
from the withering of a plant. The first man 
who hung down his head in sorrow was likened 
to a plant blasted by the sun, and failing for want 



HEBREW POETRY. 



109 



of water. These instances might be multiplied ; 
but they are sufficient to show that the language 
was formed in very early times ; it bears all the 
marks of the poverty and simplicity of a primitive 
age. It is well worthy of being studied as a 
beautiful specimen of the infant efforts of men at 
expression and thought. It completely transfers 
you to the ancient world, and associates you with 
the intellectual habits of these primitive beings. 
Its lexicon is a magazine of material forms, and 
you might look in vain for such terms as decorum, 
grace, legislation, magnanimity, or any other 
word that expresses the nicest shades of thought. 
Le Clerc, in relating the dogmas of the Phari- 
sees, shows that they could not believe in the fate 
of the Stoics, because there was no word in their 
language, even at that late age, which could ex- 
press that notion. 

Such was their speech— a tongue which seemed 
to be formed by beings immersed in the material 
world. Yet when we pass to their themes, we 
find them the most vast and intellectual that can 
possibly meet the human mind. When they en- 
gage in their subjects, they seem to leave sublu- 
nary nature behind them ; and soar into the 
10 



110 



HEBREW POETRY. 



darkest regions of the closest thought. They 
describe not battles and cities, but the conflicts of 
mind; the agonies of conscience; the mysterious 
intercourse of man with his Maker. They paint 
the sorrows of repentance, the hopes of faith, and 
the windings and snares through which the errant 
soul returns to God. They are everywhere like 
painters with the pencil put into their hands, and 
compelled to draw only allegorical forms. They 
must not go to the landscape, and copy its lilies 
and lakes. They are not to dwell on the 

" Sweet interchange 
Of hill and valley, rivers, woods and plains, 
Now land, now sea, and shores with forest 

crowned, 
Rocks, dens and caves." 

They are to transcribe only the moral landscape 
— they speak to the inner man. They sometimes 
pass the flaming bounds of space and time, and 
deal with the mysterious essence of the Deity ; 
and all this with a language which seems at first 
view entirely inadequate to the object. It is im- 
possible to conceive of a greater contrast than 



HEBREW POETRY. 



Ill 



the materialism of the Hebrew language, and the 
unembodied and exalted nature of their favorite 
themes. 

This, then, was their difficulty ; and they have 
conquered it nobly. This contrast was a far 
greater obstacle to a Hebrew bard than the hex- 
ameter verse was to the heroic poets among the 
Greeks. The critics have been in raptures at the 
invention of Homer ; and all must allow that he 
has rolled through every melodious note in his 
own beautiful language ; and laid a contribution 
on all the stores of nature, to enrich and adorn 
his theme. But every one must see that he had 
previous facilities prepared at hand. He collect- 
ed his flowers in a garden ; while the Hebrew 
poets collected them from a wilderness. What a 
rich language did he inherit ! What charming 
expressions ! Every word a picture ! He was 
indebted to those prior geniuses, who had invent- 
ed these expressions ; and thus prepared the field 
in which his mind was to play in its own un- 
bounded luxuriance. We must take something 
from the glory of Homer, and divide it with those 
perished names, which, like unseen roots, nour- 
ished the tree on which this Bird of the Muses sat 



112 HEBREW POETRY. 



and' sung. He could hang his apples of gold in 
a net-work of silver; while the Hebrew bards 
were obliged to provide not only the song, but the 
lyre and its strings. By the learned reader who 
appreciates their language, the strains must be 
read with perfect astonishment. 

Let us take an example. I have already re- 
marked that their language had very few abstract 
terms ; not even those which seem absolutely 
necessary to describe the character of the Deity. 
What would a modern theologian do, if he were 
compelled to discourse on God, without using the 
words omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipres- 
ence 1 These seem to be absolutely necessary 
to communicate our simplest conceptions of the 
great Jehovah. Yet not one of these words can 
be translated into Hebrew. There is not a term 
in that restricted language which answers to 
these essential ideas. The truth is, an infant 
people never abstract ; and when they first ap- 
proach these mighty conceptions, they approach 
them by circumlocution. Let us see how com- 
pletely the royal poet manages to communicate 
the omnipresence of God. 



HEBREW POETRY. 



113 



" Whither shall I go from thy Spirit ? 
Whither shall I flee from thy face ? 
If I ascend into heaven, 

There Thou — 
If I make my bed in the nether world, 
Behold THOU. 

" I take the wings of the east, 
Or I dwell in the remotest west, 
There thy hand shall lead me ; 
Thy right hand shall hold me up." 

Ps. cxxxix. 7 — 10. 

Thus in the most beautiful and graphic poetry 
the omnipresence of God is brought out to the 
dullest conception. We must remember that the 
upper, the nether, and the middle world, was the 
whole universe to a Hebrew mind. # 

It is true the sacred poets gather their contri- 
butions from all the stores which nature has 
spread out before them ; they make the exterior 
world an illustration of the operations of the 
mind ; and thus they have all the beauties of 
description, without missing that moral dignity 
which mere description never can attain. I allow 
the powers of Thomson ; I admire that mighty 

* See Exodus xx. 4. 

10* 



114 



HEBREW POETRY. 



genius, which, like Antaeus, gathers strength 
whenever it touches the earth ; and yet the reader 
of the Seasons feels something wanting. He 
feels as the spectator at the theatre would, in 
seeing the shifting scenes (most beautifully paint- 
ed) of one of Shakspeare's tragedies, and none of 
the moral sentiments or actions with which these 
scenes should be filled. Let a man take one of 
Thomson's best descriptions, and compare it with 
one equally good in Milton, but where the descrip- 
tion is made subservient to a higher result, and 
feel the difference. 

" As when from mountain tops the dusky clouds 
Ascending, while the north-wind sleeps, o'er- 
spread 

Heaven's cheerful face, the lowering element 
Scowls o'er the darkened landscape, snow or 
showe r ; 

If chance the radiant sun with farewell sweet 
Extend his evening beam, the fields revive, 
The birds their notes renew, and bleating herds 
Attest their joy, that hill and valley ring." 

Never was there a more beautiful or complete 
scene brought to view. Had the author's object 



HEBREW POETRY. 



115 



been mere description, it could not have been 
more finished ; and yet it is only an incidental 
gem, which he picks up in his path, without going 
one step out of the way to find it. He has a 
higher object than mere poetry ; he wishes to 
illustrate the dawnings of transient hope on fallen 
minds. We have the same dignity in the writ- 
ings of the Hebrews. They make the material 
world play around the pedestals of those awful 
images with which their minds are filled. In the 
thirty-fourth chapter of Ezekiel, if it had been the 
sole object of the prophet to describe pastoral life, 
it could scarcely have been more beautiful. In 
this respect, his description might rival one of the 
best pastorals of Theocritus. But at the same 
time the deepest moral beauty is spread over the 
whole. God is the shepherd, and he is watching 
over his people. 

In a word, the beauties of biblical poetry, like 
all the severe beauties, must be acquired by study. 
They are so simple, so unlike modern sentiment- 
alism, that, when first seen, they strike the eye 
with disappointment. But look again, and your 
attention will be arrested — a third time, and you 
will admire ; and once let the model impress your 



116 



HEBREW POETRY. 



taste, and you will admire forever. It seems to 
me, for touching the deeper tones of the heart, the 
Hebrew poetry has an internal grandeur, com- 
pared with which, the songs of mythology are 
cold and unmeaning. 



THE DYING HEBREW'S PRAYER. 

BY WILLIAM HERBERT. 

A Hebrew knelt, in the dying light, — 

His eye was dim and cold, 
The hairs on his brow were silver-white, 

And his blood was thin and old ! 
He lifted his look to his latest sun, 
For he knew that his pilgrimage was done ! — 
And as he saw God's shadow* there, 
His spirit poured itself in prayer ! 

" I come unto death's second birth, 

Beneath a stranger-air, 
A pilgrim on a dull, cold earth, 

As all my fathers were ! 
And men have stamped me with a curse, — 

I feel it is not Thine, 
Thy mercy — like yon sun — was made 

On me — as them — to shine ; 
And, therefore, dare I lift mine eye, 
Through that, to Thee, — before I die ! 

* Plato calls Truth the body of God, and Light, his Shadow! — perhaps the 
sublimest of all conceptions having a merely mortal breast for their birth-place. 



THE DYING HEBREW'S PRAYER. 

In this great temple, built by Thee, 

Whose altars are divine, 
Beneath yon lamp, that, ceaselessly, 

Lights up Thine own true shrine, 
Oh ! take my latest sacrifice,— 

Look down, and make this sod 
Holy as that where, long ago, 

The Hebrew met his God ! 

' I have not caused the widow's tears, 

Nor dimmed the orphan's eye ; 
I have not stained the virgin's years, 

Nor mocked the mourner's cry : 
The songs of Zion, in mine ear, 

Have, ever, been most sweet, 
And, always, when I felt Thee near, 

My ' shoes' were ' off my feet' ! 

' I have known Thee, in the whirlwind, 

I have known Thee, on the hill, 
I have loved Thee, in the voice of birds, 

Or the music of the rill ! 
I dreamt Thee, in the shadow, 

I saw Thee, in the light, 
I heard Thee, in the thunder-peal, 

And worshipped, in the night ! 



THE DYING HEBREW S PRAYER. 



All beauty, while it spoke of Thee, 

Still made my soul rejoice, 
And my spirit bowed within itself, 

To hear Thy ' still small voice ! ' — 
I have not felt myself a thing 

Far from Thy presence driven, 
By flaming sword or waving wing, 

Shut out from Thee and heaven ! 

Must I the whirlwind reap, because 

My father sowed the storm ? 
Or shrink — because another sinned — 

Beneath Thy red right arm ? 
Oh ! much of this we dimly scan, 

And much is all unknown, — 
But I will not take my curse from man 

I turn to Thee alone ! 
Oh ! bid my fainting spirit live, 

And what is dark reveal, 
And what is evil, oh ! forgive, 

And what is broken, heal ; 
And cleanse my nature, from above, 
In the deep Jordan of thy love. 

I know not if the Christian's heaven 
Shall be the same as mine, 



THE DYING HEBREW'S PRAYER. 

I only ask to be forgiven, 

And taken home to Thine ! 
I wander on a far, dim strand, 

Whose mansions are as tombs, 
And long to find the father-land, 

Where there are many homes ! — 
Oh ! grant, of all yon starry thrones, 

Some dim and distant star, 
Where Judah's lost and scattered sons 

May love Thee, from afar ! 
When all earth's myriad harps shall meet, 

In choral praise and prayer, 
Shall Zion's harp — of old so sweet, — - 

Alone be wanting, there ? 
Yet, place me in thy lower seat, 

Though I — as now — be, there, 
The Christian's scorn, the Christian's jest ; 

But let me see and hear, 
From some dim mansion in the sky, 
Thy bright ones, and their melody!" 

The sun goes down, with sudden gleam ; 
And — beautiful as a lovely dream, 

And«eilently as air, — 
The vision of a dark-eyed girl, 

With long and raven hair, 



THE DYING HEBREW S PRAYER. 



121 



Glides in — as guardian spirits glide, 
And lo ! is kneeling by his side ; 

As if her sudden presence, there, 

Were sent in answer to his prayer ! 
(O ! say they not that angels tread 
Around the good man's dying bed !) 
His child ! his sweet and sinless child ! — 

And as he gazed on her, 
He knew his God was reconciled, 

And this his messenger, — 
As sure as God had hung, on high, 
The promise bow before his eye ! — 
Earth's purest hope thus o'er him flung, 

To point his heavenward faith, 
And Life's most holy feeling strung 

To sing him unto death ! 
And on his daughter's stainless breast, 
The dying Hebrew sought his rest ! 
11 



JEHOVAH LIVETH. 

" And though they say, The Lord liveth ; surely they swear falsely." 

Jeremiah v. 2. 

Priests offer Sheba's incense and sweet cane, 
Responding, each to each, " Jehovah lives ! " 
His car through death the maddened warrior drives, 

Raising the cry "Jehovah lives!" again: 

The watchmen at the gate their guard maintain, 

"Jehovah lives!" the countersign each gives. 

"Jehovah lives!" the monarch cries, and strives 
With such a spell his sceptre to sustain ! — 

Yet altar priests a hireling service give, 
A.nd crimsoned warriors fight for fame or gold, 

The guards with tales of peace their lord 
deceive, 

Whose tyrant hands a blood-stained sceptre hold. 
Why with such lies the Lord of Nations grieve ? 
In your false hearts Jehovah does not live ! 



WORSHIP. 

BY JONES VERY. 

There is no worship now, — the idol stands 
Within the spirit's holy resting place ! 
Millions before it bend with upraised hands, 
And with their gifts God's purer shrine disgrace ; 
The prophet walks unhonored mid the crowd 
That to the idol's temple daily throng ; 
His voice unheard above their voices loud, 
His strength too feeble 'gainst the torrent strong ; 
But there are bounds that ocean's rage can stay 
When wave on wave leaps madly to the shore : 
And soon the prophet's word shall men obey, 
And, hushed to peace, the billows cease to roar ; 
For he who spoke — and warring winds kept 
peace, 

Commands again — and man's wild passions cease. 



ON EABTH, AS IT IS IN HEAVEN. 

BY AUBREY DE VERE. 

Not without witness, just and gracious Lord, 
Not without witness art Thou left. The sea, 
The mountains, and the forests, preach of Thee : 
Yea, for Thy ceaseless service well accord 
The World Thy temple, and its shrine Thy word. 
The birds, the insects, yield Thee praise! but we — 
Our very worship is idolatry, 
•While but from fear or custom stands adored 
That which remains unloved, almost unknown. 
O might our moral world Thy laws obey, 
As outward nature doth her course fulfil, 
Calm as the seasons, sure as night and day ! 
This were the granting of all prayer — Thy will 
Thus, thus, on earth, even as in heaven, were done. 



THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 

BY REV. JAMES MARTIN EAU. 

Near the eastern margin of the gigantic empire 
of Rome, lay a small strip of coast which had 
been added to its dominions by Pompey the 
Great. The accession had excited little notice, 
eclipsed" and forgotten amid the crowd of greater 
acquisitions, and in itself too insignificant to 
excite even the ready vanity of conquest. The 
district had nothing in it to draw towards it the 
attention of a people dazzled by the magnitude 
and splendor of their own power. Remote from 
the existing centres of opulent and cultivated 
society, with a language unknown to educated 
men, destitute of any literature to excite curiosity, 
or any specimens of art to awaken wonder, it 
would have lain in exile from the great human 
community, had not the circulation of commerce 
embraced it, and self-interest secured for it a 
surly and contemptuous regard. It lay between 
the fallen kingdoms of Egypt and Assyria, but 
derived no distinction from its position ; it seemed 
11* 



126 



THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 



covered with the dust, without sharing the glories, 
of their ruined magnificence. Its inhabitants were 
the most unpopular of nations ; — a people out of 
date, relics of a ruder period of the world, — 
having the prejudices of age without its wisdom, 
and the superstitions of the East without its lofti- 
ness : — they had long been deserted by the tide 
of civilization, now flowing on other shores, and 
were left without the refreshment of a sympathy. 
And as hatred stimulates ferocity, and contempt 
invites men to be mean, they retreated into the 
seclusion of all unsocial passions. They detested : 
they despised : they suspected : they writhed under 
authority : they professed submission only to ob- 
tain revenge : they had no heritage in the present ; 
content with nothing which it brought, they had 
no gratitude to express : their affections were for 
the past and the future ; and their worship was 
one of memory and of hope, not of love. Fair 
and fertile as were the fields of Palestine, it was 
held to be the blot of the nations, the scowl of the 
world. 

In a hamlet of this country, sequestered among 
the hills which enclose the Galilean lake, a peas- 
ant, eighteen centuries ago, began to fill up the 



THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 



127 



intervals of worldly occupation with works of 
mercy, and efforts of public instruction. Neglect- 
ed by his own villagers of Nazareth, he took up 
his residence in the neighboring town of Caper- 
naum ; and there, escaped from the prejudices of 
his first home, and left to the natural influence of 
his own character, he found friends, hearers, fol- 
lowers. He mixed in their societies, he wor- 
shipped in their synagogues, he visited their 
homes, he grew familiar with their neighborhood, 
he taught on the hill-side, he watched their traffic 
on the beach, and joined in their excursions on 
the lake. He clothed himself in their affections, 
and they admitted him to their sorrows, and his 
presence consecrated their joys. Their Hebrew 
feelings became human when he was near ; and 
their rude nationality of worship rose towards the 
filial devotion of a rational and responsible mind. 
Nor was it altogether a familiar and equal, though 
a profoundly confiding sympathy, which he awak- 
ened. For power more than human followed 
his steps ; and in many a home there dwelt living 
memorials of his miracles : and among his most 
grateful disciples there were those who remem- 
bered the bitterness of the leper's exile, or shud- 



128 



THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 



dered at the yet unforgotten horrors of madness. 
That the awe of Deity which was kindled by his 
acts, and the love of goodness which was excited 
by his life, might not be confined to one spot of 
his country, twelve associates were first drawn 
closely around him to observe and learn, and then 
dispersed to repeat his miracles, report and teach. 
They were with him when the recurring festivals 
summoned him, in common with his fellow- 
citizens, to leave a while Capernaum for Jeru- 
salem. They beheld how his dignity rose, when 
his sphere of action was thus enlarged, and the 
interest of his position deepened ; — when the rus- 
tic audience was replaced by the crowd of the 
metropolis, and viljage cavillers gave way to 
priests and rulers, and the handful of neighbors 
in the provincial synagogue was exchanged for 
the strange and gaudy multitudes that thronged 
the vast temple at the hour of prayer. In one 
of these expeditions, the fears of the established 
authorities, and the disappointment of a once 
favoring multitude, whose ambition he had re- 
fused to gratify, combined to crush him. It was 
soon done ; the Passover at Jerusalem was its 
assizes too : the betrayal and the trial over, the 



THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 



129 



execution was part of the annual celebration, a 
spectacle that furnished an hour's excitement to 
the populace. But there were eyes that looked 
on with no careless or savage gaze ; — of one who 
knew what he was in childhood ; — of many that 
had seen his recent life in Galilee. The twelve, 
too, lingered closely around the event ) and they 
say that he came back from death, spake to them 
oft for forty days, and was carried before their 
view beyond the precincts of this earth. 

Here is a series of events deeply interesting 
indeed to those who were immersed in them ; but 
of which, even on the spot where they occurred, 
it might have been expected, that within one 
generation their very rumor would have died 
away, lost in the stir and cares of life. A few 
months began and ended them ; an obscure recess 
of the world was acted upon by them. They 
concerned one of a social class which is beneath 
the proud level of history, and whose vicissitudes, 
after a few years, are added to that dark abyss 
of forgotten things, above which gigantic vices 
and ambitious virtues struggle to be seen. They 
are, moreover, the simple record of a private life, 
coming in almost at the death of ancient history, 



130 



THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 



and, overshadowed by its pageantry, the miracles 
themselves rendered insipid, except for their be- 
nevolence, by its prodigies. Yet this fragment 
of biography did not die ; it not only lived, but it 
gave life ; it recast society in Europe, and called 
into being a new world. 



THE DIFFUSION OF CHRISTIANITY 
AND ITS ORIGIN. 

BY PRESIDENT HOPKINS. 

The fitness of Christianity to become universal 
arises as much from what it is not as from what 
it is, and can be fully appreciated only by looking 
at the relation of its object to all human insti- 
tutions. That object is a moral object, with no 
taint of anything earthly about it ; and in pursuing 
it, Christianity keeps itself entirely aloof from all 
political and local questions. It regards man 
solely as a moral and spiritual being, under the 
government of God ; and its object, distinctly 
announced from the first, is to save men from the 
consequences of transgression under that govern- 
ment. " His name shall be called Jesus/' said 
the angel, " for he shall save his people from 
their sins." Not from the Roman yoke, not pri- 
marily from any earthly evil, but from their sins. 
Upon this one object Christianity steadily keeps 
its eye. The Son of Man came " to seek and to 
save that which was lost." It is simply a system 



e 

132 THE DIFFUSION OF CHRISTIANITY 

of salvation from sin and its consequences, under 
the government of God ; and whatever may be 
his age, or language, or country, or the form of 
government under which he lives, it is equally 
adapted to every child of Adam who is led to ask 
the question, "What must I do to be saved?" 
It comes with pardon and hope to every one who 
feels the guilt of sin, or who is subject to bondage 
through fear of death. There are certain great 
moral interests which are common to the race, 
certain chords in the human heart which vibrate 
whenever they are struck ; and it is remarkable 
that Christianity concerns itself only with those 
interests, and strikes only those chords. It has 
to do with individuals as guilty under the govern- 
ment of God, without respect to their earthly re- 
lations ; and hence it has the power to enter in 
as a new element, and to pervade and enlighten 
every form of society, as the sunlight enters into 
and pervades the body of the atmosphere. Hence, 
in its original diffusion, regarding man simply as 
man, it swept as freely as the breeze of heaven 
past all territorial and national limits. All other 
religions are adapted to particular climates ; are 
upheld, like that of the Jews, by association with 



AND ITS ORIGIN. 133 

particular places ; but, since Christ has entered 
into the true tabernacle above, incense and a pure 
offering may go up from every place. All other 
religions are connected with the government, and 
we have no evidence that, without such connec- 
tion, they could be sustained. But " Christianity, 
as a spiritual system, is always superior to every 
visible institution.'' Some systems and institu- 
tions may oppose greater obstacles to its progress 
than others ; but none can become Christianity, 
nor can they do anything for it except to give it 
free scope to do its own work upon individual 
character. It is not monarchy, it is not democra- 
cy, it is not Episcopacy, it is not Congregation- 
alism ; it is something which may pervade and 
bless society where any of these exist, and which 
may be withdrawn and leave either of these stand- 
ing as an organization through which human 
passion and corruption shall work out their own 
unmixed and unmitigated effects. Hence, too, 
Christianity attacks no visible institutions as 
such. It goes to the slave, and tells him he is 
the Lord's freeman ; it goes to the master, and 
tells him he is Christ's servant. It tells both mas- 
ter and slave that they are brethren. It goes to 
12 



134 THE DIFFUSION OF CHRISTIANITY 

the king, and tells him he is the subject of a higher 
power; it goes to the subject, and tells him he may 
become a king and priest to God. It raises all 
men to the level of a common immortality ; it 
depresses them all to the level of a common sin- 
fulness and exposure ; it subjects all to a common 
accountability ; it offers to all a common salva- 
tion ; it proposes to all a law of perfect equity and 
a principle of universal love ; and then it leaves 
these principles and motives to work their own 
effect, — assured that, in proportion as they act, 
they must change the nature, if not the name, of 
all visible institutions opposed to its spirit. It is 
capable of taking human organizations, as culture 
took the peach when it was dwarfed and its fruit 
was poisonous, and of causing other juices and 
vital fluids to circulate through the pores of those 
same organizations, and far other fruit to hang 
upon their branches. It understands perfectly 
that no change of form is of any permanent value 
without a change of spirit ; and seeks (and oh that 
men would learn this lesson ! ) a change of form 
only through a change of spirit. Hence it works 
like leaven, that passes on from particle to par- 
ticle, and finds no limit till the whole lump is 



AND ITS ORIGIN. 



135 



leavened. Hence, too, I may remark here, Chris- 
tianity is the most formidable of all foes to tyrants, 
and to every form of oppression. No walls or 
fortifications, or armed legions, can keep it out, 
and no weapon can smite it. Working silently 
upon the consciences of men, it is impossible to 
say where it is, or to what extent, and the opposer 
knows not where to strike. The very execution- 
er chosen by persecution offers himself to die 
with the martyr ; and when it is supposed that the 
two witnesses are dead, and there is great re- 
joicing, they suddenly rise and stand upon their 
feet. 

^* 

Thus we see a preparation made, in the adap- 
tation of Christianity to the condition and wants 
of man, for that final and universal triumph pre- 
dicted by the prophets and waited for by the 
church ; and through these, in connection with 
that divine aid which is promised and has never 
been withheld, we think it rational to expect, not 
only that it will be perpetuated to the end of time, 
but that " the mountain of the Lord's house will 
be established in the top of the mountains, and 
that all nations will flee unto it." 



136 THE DIFFUSION OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Having thus spoken of the continuance of 
Christianity till the end of time, I will close by 
observing that, in substance, if not in form, it has 
continued from its beginning. That it should 
have been always in the world, is mentioned by 
Pascal as the mark of a religion from God. It 
is a mark which we might expect would belong 
to the true religion, and this mark Christianity, 
and that alone, has. The Patriarchal, the Jew- 
ish, and the Christian dispensations, are evidently 
but the unfolding of one general plan. In the 
first we see the folded bud: in the second, the 
expanded leaf : in the third, the blossom and the 
fruit. And now, how sublime the idea of a 
religion thus commencing in the earliest dawn of 
time ; holding on its way through all the revolu- 
tions of kingdoms and the vicissitudes of the race ; 
receiving new forms, but always identical in spirit ; 
and finally expanding and embracing in one great 
brotherhood the whole family of man ! Who can 
doubt that such a religion was from God ? 



THE MADONNA AND CHILD. 



BY BERNARD BARTON. 

I may not change the simple faith, 

In which from childhood I was bred ; 
Nor could I, without scorn, or scathe, 

The living seek among the dead ; 
My soul has far too deeply fed 

On what no painting can express, 
To bend the knee, or bow the head, 

To aught of pictured loveliness. 

And yet, Madonna ! when I gaze 

On charms unearthly, such as thine ; 
Or glances yet more reverent raise 

Unto that infant, so divine ! 
I marvel not that many a shrine 

Hath been, and still is, reared to thee, 
Where mingled feelings might combine 

To bow the head and bend the knee. 
12* 



THE MADONNA AND CHILD. 



For who, that is of woman born, 

And hath that birthright understood, 
Mindful of being's early morn, 

Can e'er behold, with thoughtless mood, 
Most pure and perfect womanhood ? 

Woman, by angel once addressed ; 
And by the wise, the great, the good, 

Of every age, accounted blessed ! 

Or who that feels the spell which Heaven 

Casts round us in our infancy, 
But, more or less, hath homage given 

To childhood, half unconscious why ? 
A yet more touching mystery 

Is in that feeling comprehended, 
When thus is brought before the eye 

Godhead with childhood strangely blended 

And hence I marvel not at all, 

That spirits, needing outward aid, 
Should feel and own the magic thrall 

In your meek loveliness displayed : 
And if the objects thus portrayed 

Brought comfort, hope, or joy, to them, 
Their error, let who will upbraid, 

I rather pity, — than condemn. 



THE MADONNA AND CHILD. 



139 



For me, though not by hands of mine, 

May shrine or altar be upreared ; 
In you, the human and divine 

Have both so beautiful appeared, 
That each, in turn, hath been endeared, 

As in you feeling has explored 
Woman, — with holier love revered, 

And God, — more gratefully adored. 



THE FIRST MOMENT OF THE GOSPEL. 

(FROM A SERMON ON THE TEMPTATION.) 
BY REV. W. J. FOX. 

What a moment of intense feeling to himself 
must that have been in which Christ began to 
preach ! It is only by the recollection of the 
strongest sensations in their own lives, and by that 
analogy, that faith in the universally similar con- 
stitution of man, however varied by circumstances, 
to which we must have recourse, that any concep- 
tion of it can be formed by others. How faint 
must the conception be, after all ! He who has 
entered in mature life on some public and impor- 
tant course of action, will never forget his emo- 
tions on the occasion ; he will look back to them, 
and analyze them, and revive them, and ponder 
on their complexity and their forces ; and though 
all sensations lose their freshness, and fade from 
their vividness, yet will they glimmer on his mind 
through the long vista of years, and be extin- 
guished but in the grave. So must it have been 
with Christ at that time, though after events would 



THE FIRST MOMENT OF THE GOSPEL. 141 

agitate with yet deeper emotion, and thus displace 
in some degree the impression ; and the absolute 
peculiarity of his circumstances would have some 
corresponding peculiarity of feeling. But so, 
with these varieties, must it then have been with 
him. I cannot imagine even his exalted mind 
engaging in such a task without intense anxiety. 

What immense consequences were to result 
from the words he was about to utter, both to him- 
self, his hearers, and ultimately to the remotest 
nations and ages ! He was then committing him- 
solf to the awful trial. From that instant there 
was no shrinking back, no temporizing, no devi- 
ating a hair's breadth from the path which led to 
glory, but by the cross and the grave. It was a 
fearful plunge into a stormy ocean of prejudice, 
passion, and persecution. He saw the foaming 
billows which would be allowed to pass over his 
head and spend on him their fury. From the first 
syllable he uttered, he was at war with all that 
was powerful in his country, in its rulers or its 
populace. They were his enemies to the death, 
and beyond that, had it been possible for human 
malice to baffle Divine Providence, and blast him 
as an impostor. He was alone ; and not in his 



142 THE FIRST MOMENT OF THE GOSPEL. 



native abode, not in the friendliness of neigh- 
borhood, the affection of relationship, was he to 
find support. For some time, at least, " his breth- 
ren believed not on him." The words he uttered 
would even sever him from them. And in what 
a character was he to speak ! How imposing its 
dignity, if recognized ; how detestable his sup- 
posed presumption, where it was not acknowl- 
edged ! How solicitous must he have been to 
be, in action, and in speech, all that it required ! 
How would the conviction, that now his lot was 
cast, and his destiny of anguish and of final glory 
decided ; the sensation of taking the first step, 
beyond which there was only to go on, through 
all events, to the end ; the thought that an awful 
responsibility, of temporal and more than tem- 
poral nature, hung over his hearers' heads ; the 
laceration of ties of kindred or country, to be 
soon torn by the rejection of his claims, and the 
visitations of heaven for that crime ; the melting 
pity which his heart felt for the wretchedness 
which he saw, and that of a wider circle which 
his mind depicted; the fervent benevolence that 
flowed so strongly and spread so widely in his 
generous bosom ; the humble piety that enabled 



THE FIRST MOMENT OF THE GOSPEL. 143 

him to confide in God for everything, and, acting 
under His direction, merge all fears and hope in 
filial reliance on His omnipotence ; — how must 
all these emotions have then mingled and swelled 
within, too mighty even for his utterance, as they 
are for the grasp of our imagination ! 

What a moment was that for Judea ! Then 
came on the great trial of the seed of Abraham. 
Then was the nation tested, and obedience or 
disobedience to decide its fate for many a revolv- 
ing century. Then were they to fill up the 
measure of their fathers' iniquities, and the land 
be smitten with a curse ; or all past offences to 
be obliterated by one great act of submission to 
Heaven. Never was there, in any other people's 
history, so awful a crisis of their fate. The 
blessing and the curse were both before them, 
and they were rushing blindfold to the choice. 
The temper in which they heard was the com- 
mencement of a determination whether the temple 
should stand, or be annihilated ; whether Jeru- ■ 
salem should nourish, or the fire devour its build- 
ings, and the plough pass over the soil on which 
it rested ; whether the nation should remain in the 
smile of heaven, or become the scorn and by- word 



144 THE FIRST MOMENT OF THE GOSPEL. 

of the earth. They did decide. They are in 
their eighteenth century of rejection and degra- 
dation. 

What a moment was that for the world, little 
as the world then heeded it ! Monarchs were 
issuing their decrees ; and priests were officiating 
in their temples ; and philosophers were teaching 
in their schools ; and politicians were immersed 
in the fancied profundity of their schemes and 
farsightedness of their calculations ; and poets 
were singing their country's gods and their 
country's eternal glory ; and the ambitious were 
shaping and fixing the steps of the ladder that 
ascends to power ; and the Epicureans were rev- 
elling on their couches at their banquets ; and 
slaves were crouching in their dungeon, or howl- 
ing under the lash ; and the multitude of Rome 
was applauding the bloody sport of the amphi- 
theatre ; and that of Corinth was shaming the 
brute creation in the unbridled license of sensu- 
* ality ; and that of Ephesus was glorifying Diana ; 
and that of Athens hearing or seeking some new 
thing : — and what peals of ridicule would have 
overwhelmed the impertinent absurdity, (as they 
would have deemed it,) had any uttered it, that in 



THE FIRST MOMENT OF THE GOSPEL. 145 

the petty country of Judea, or in the little con- 
temptible province of Galilee, an obscure peasant, 
the son of a carpenter, was then beginning to 
preach, and, by that act, beginning the subversion 
of the Roman empire ; the revolution of its man- 
ners, philosophy, religion ; the completest change 
from what then was that could be conceived, and 
to which all other convulsions were comparatively 
unworthy the notice of history ! Yet so it was. 
They were in all their pride, and pomp, and fame, 
and luxury, and seeming durability ; and he ap- 
parently as little to be heeded as, by the powers 
that be, the meanest itinerant who in some remote 
village may gather, in street or field, a peasant 
auditory around him ; and now they are a pile of 
ruin, at the base of his cross, and their history is 
ransacked to afford illustrations for a sentence of 
the record of his sermons ! 

What a moment was that for us ! Here are we 
assembled in the name of Christ, and with that 
name blending the sense of what is most dear and 
pleasurable here, and the prospect of a life, an 
immortality, hereafter ; finding in his discourses 
materials for faith, and hope, and obedience ; 
placing him before us as a perfect model, to 
13 



146 THE FIRST MOMENT OF THE GOSPEL* 

shame our failings and stimulate our virtues ; with 
many a charity rising around us, and many a 
feeling glowing within us, which we can only call 
Christian; no day of our existence, — no action, no 
relation of life, — no retirement in solitude, nor 
mingling with society, — in which we are not 
aware, on reflection, that in some degree or other 
it springs from, or is modified by, Christianity ; — 
and that was the commencement of Christianity, 
the first link in the chain that enfolds us round 
and binds us with society, and draws us on into 
an interminable but blessed futurity ! 

What a moment was that for the human race ! 
Then began the seed of the woman to crush the 
serpent's head. Then arose the principle of 
good, in its brightness, to restrain, and subdue, 
and annihilate the principle of evil. By man had 
come death, and then by man was coming the 
resurrection of the dead. Sin had abounded, 
and then came grace to superabound. God had 
spoken by servants ; then spake he by his Son, 
commanding " all men, everywhere, to repent." 
Then flowed the words which are spirit and 
life, and which the Father spake by Christ. 
Then came plain instruction, and holy precepts, 



THE FIRST MOMENT OF THE GOSPEL. 147 

and precious promises, and affectionate persua- 
sions, and solemn warnings, and heart-soothing 
consolations, and all the inspiring splendor of 
immortal hopes. Then began Jehovah to triumph 
gloriously over the false deities of long ages and 
mighty nations. Then commenced the procla- 
mation of pardon and remission of sins, on re- 
pentance, to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. 
Then first was that voice publicly heard, which 
soon reached even the ear of death, and which 
will penetrate the whole dominion of the grave, 
and pronounce the sentence of a judged world, 
and call on the Father to receive and bless 
a restored universe. All, and forever, have the 
deepest interest in the results of that moment. 
Swiftly did it pass in the ever-flowing current of 
time ; firmly will those results abide on the rock 
of Eternity. 



HYMN. 



BY JOHN STERLING. 

O Thou ! sole Sire ! pervading Lord of all, 
Who spread' st thy fulness round this earthly ball ; 
You teach me still in every face to see 
An ampler mould than all the skies of Thee. 

By passion wrenched and darkened, torn by hate, 
By sin dethroned from all our heavenly state, 
Thy spirit stained, defaced, and scarred with shame, 
Still shows on each thy noblest creature's name. 

Though changed, how far ! from all thy will com- 
mands, 

And bruised and maimed by evil's rending hands ; 
While life, and thought, and soul, and sense, are 
ours, 

Still lasts the wreck of more than earthly powers. 

Renew, — thou only canst, O God ! — the plan 
Of truth and love, so blurred and crushed in man, — 
That good, designed for all, to all unknown, 
Till set before our eyes in one alone. 



HYMN. 



149 



From Him, so full of Thee, the Father's mind, 
The Father's holy love to all our kind, 
Oh ! teach us Thou to draw whate'er of best 
Restores to Thee the self-bewildered breast ; — 

Amid our waste be He a living spring, 
Amid our lawless wars a peaceful king ; 
In our dark night be He a dawning star, 
In woe a friend, to aid us come from far. 

And thus, that we His help and hope may share, 
Our hearts, o'erthrown by sin, do Thou repair ; 
And so, in chambers purified by Thee, 
His peace may dwell, and there His spirit be. 

O Thou ! whose will has joined us each to all, 
And made the lonely heart itself appal, 
Who art the vital bond that knits in one 
Thy countless myriads born beneath the sun ; 

Thou aid us, Heavenly Sire ! that each for each 
May live, as He for all, in deed and speech ; 
And so do Thou for us, paternal Lord ! 
Make bright, like His, the face, and pure the word. 
13* 



150 



HYMN. 



Like us a man, He trod on earthly soil, 
He bore each pang, and strove in weary toil ; 
He spake with human words, with pity sighed ; 
Like us He mourned, and feared, and wept, and 
died. 

Yet all thy fulness, Father, dwelt in Him, 
In whom no shadow made thy glory dim ; 
Such strength, O God ! from Him to us derive, 
And make, by life from Him, our death alive. 



MIDNIGHT. 



BY AUBREY DE VERE. 

The stars shine bright while earth is dark ! 

While all the woods are dumb, 
How clear those far off silver chimes 

From tower and turret come ! 

Chilly but sweet the midnight air : 

And lo ! with every sound, 
Down from the ivy-leaf a drop 

Falls glittering to the ground. 

'T was night when Christ was born on earth ; 

Night heard his faint first cry ; 
While angels carolled round the star 

Of the Epiphany. 

Alas ! and is our love too weak 

To meet him on his way ? 
To pray for nations in their sleep ? — 

For love then let us pray ! 



152 



MIDNIGHT. 



Pray for the millions slumbering now ; 

The sick, who cannot sleep : 
O may those sweet sounds waft them thoughts 

As peaceful and as deep ! 

Pray for the idle, and the vain : 

O may that pure-toned bell 
Disperse the Demon Powers of air, 

And evil dreams dispel ! 

Pray for the aged, and the poor ; 

The crown-encompassed head ; 
The friends of youth, now far away ; 

The dying, and the dead. 

And ever let us wing our prayer 

With praise : and ever say 
Glory to God, who makes the night 

Benignant as the day ! 



FOR THREE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING. 

BY AUBREY DE VERE. 

A low sweet voice from out the brake 

Provoked a loud reply : 
Now half the birds are half awake, — 

They feel the morning nigh. 

Now, fainting 'neath her load of dreams, 

The moon inclines her brows, 
Expectant, towards those mightier beams 

That grant her toils repose. 

Long streaks, the prophets of the sun, 

Illume the dusk, gray hill : 
But still the heart of Heaven is dun ; 

The day is virgin still ! 

O Christ ! ere yet beheld on earth, 

How oft, incarnate word, 
Thy prophets heraldeth thy birth ! 

Alas, how seldom heard ! 



NIGHT. 



BY SIR THOMAS BROWNE. 

The night is come, like to the day ; 
Depart not thou, great God, away ! 
Let not my sins, black as the night, 
Eclipse the lustre of thy light ; 
Keep still in my horizon ; for to me 
The sun makes not the day, but Thee. 
Thou, whose nature cannot sleep, 
On my temples sentry keep ; 
Guard me 'gainst those watchful foes, 
Whose eyes are open while mine close. 
Let no dreams my head infest, 
But such as Jacob's temples blest. 
While I do rest, my soul advance, 
Make my sleep a holy trance ; 
That I may, my rest being wrought, 
Awake into some holy thought ; 
And with as active vigor run 
My course, as doth the nimble sun. 
Sleep is a death ; O make me try, 
By sleeping, what it is to die ; 



NIGHT. 



155 



And as gently lay my head 
On my grave, as now my bed. 
Howe'er I rest, great God, let me 
Awake again at last with Thee : 
And thus assured, behold I lie 
Securely, or to wake or die. 
These are my drowsy days ; in vain 
I do now wake, to sleep again. 
O come that hour when I shall never 
Sleep again, but wake for ever. 



-4« 



THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

FEOM " MARGARET," BY REV. SYLVESTER JUDD. 

" Of the subject itself, Christ, what can I say?" 
said Mr. Evelyn. " It is almost too great for 
our comprehension, as it certainly rises above all 
petty disputes. How can I describe what I know 
not ? How can I embrace a nature that so ex- 
ceeds my own ? How can I tell of a love I never 
felt, or recount attainments I never reached ? 
Can I give out what I have not ? — and I some- 
times fear I am not completely possessed of 
Christ. Can I, the Imperfect, appreciate the Per- 
fect one? Can I, the sinful, reveal the sinless 
soul? I have not Christ's spirit, his truth, his joy, 
so integrally, and plenarily, that I can set him 
forth in due proportion and entireness, His ex- 
perience and character, his spiritual strength and 
moral goodness, are so transcendent, I truly hesi- 
tate at the task you impose on me. That we 
may portray the poet or the artist, or any high 
excellence, we must square with it ; who, alas ! is 
equal to Christ ! " 



THE LIFE OF JESUS. 



157 



" Yet," said Margaret, " all that is, lies secretly 
coiled within our own breasts ! All beauty, I am 
persuaded, is within us ; whatever comes to me 
I feel to have had a pre-existence. I sometimes 
indeed doubt whether I give or receive. A flower 
takes color from the sun, and gives off color. Air 
makes the fire burn, and the fire makes the air 
blow ; and the colder the weather the brisker the 
fire. — I think if you only begin, it will all come 
to you. As you drain off, it will flow in. The 
sinful may give out the sinless. I long to hear 
what you have to say." 

" What you observe is too true, and I thank 
you for making me recollect myself. Even the 
Almighty creates us, and then suffers himself to 
be revealed in us. We, motes, carry an immens- 
ity of susceptible responsive existence. But for 
this we should never love or know Christ. In 
his boyhood, we are told, Christ waxed strong in 
spirit, was filled with wisdom, and the grace of 
God was upon him. His earliest developments 
must have been of a peculiarly beautiful and 
striking kind. When he was twelve years old, 
being in company of some learned people, his 
questions and replies were of such a nature as to 
14 



158 



THE LIFE OF JESUS. 



excite astonishment in all present, at the extent 
of his understanding. We have no authentic ac- 
count of him from this until his thirtieth year, 
excepting that he resided with his father, and 
pursued the family avocation, that of a carpen- 
ter." 

" What ! do you know nothing about him when 
he was as old as I am, or as you are ? when he 
was fifteen, or twenty, or twenty-five ? In the 
dream I remember he said I must be like him, 
I must grow up with him. Had he no youth? 
Had he no inward, sorrowful feelings, as I have 
had ? " 

" There is one of the books of the New Testa- 
ment of a peculiar character, and it contains some 
intimations respecting Christ not found in the 
others. I will read a passage. 'In the days of 
his flesh he offered up or poured forth prayers 
and supplications, with strong crying and tears, 
to Him that was able to save him from death, and 
was heard in that he feared/ or, as it stands in 
the original, 4 for his piety/ This, as I believe, 
points to a period in his life not recorded in the 
other histories, and should be assigned to that 
which you have mentioned — his youth." 



THE LIFE OF JESUS. 159 

" I have no doubt of it," said Margaret. " It 
describes exactly what I have been through. Did 
he suffer all we do ?" 

" Yes, his life and sufferings were archetypal 
of those of all his followers. ' He suffered for 
us,' says St. Peter, ' leaving us an example that 
we should follow in his steps.' ' Rejoice,' he 
says, ' inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's 
sufferings.' " 

" How near this brings Christ to me ! It seems 
as if I had him now in my heart. He too suffered! 
How much there is in that word ! and in this 
earnest, soul-deep way ! I understand his sad, 
tender look. Apollo killed Hyacinth by accident, 
and was very sorry. But there was no deep, 
capable soul in Apollo, was there ? I shall not 
think so much of him. I interrupt you, sir ; go 
on." 

" He suffered all that any being can suffer ; 
he was alone, unbefriended, unsympathized with, 
unaided ; books gave him no satisfaction, teachers 
afforded him no light. The current, swift and 
broad, of popular error and prejudice, he had to 
stem and turn, single-handed. He grew in 
knowledge, we read ; the problems of Man, God 



160 



THE LIFE OF JESUS. 



and the Universe, were given to him to resolve. 
But he was heard for his piety, for his goodness. 
He became perfect through suffering. Super- 
natural, divine assistance was afforded him, and 
he conquered at last. At the age of thirty, when 
he entered what is called his public ministry, 
which is the chief subject of history, he encoun- 
tered a severe temptation, such as all are liable 
to, and was enabled to vanquish it ; he was tempt- 
ed as we are. He was ever without sin, neither 
was guile found in his mouth ; he was holy, harm- 
less, undefiled. At times he was made indignant 
at the conduct of men; he was grieved at the 
hardness of their hearts, he groaned in sympathy 
with human distress, he wept over the follies of 
the race ; he was persecuted by the great, and 
despised by his own kindred ; his nearest friends 
deserted him, and one of his chosen disciples 
betrayed him ; the greatness of his views met only 
with bigotry, and the generosity of his heart was 
repelled by meanness ; he carried the heavy wood 
on which he was crucified, and when brought as 
a malefactor to the place of execution, he was 
scourged and spit upon ; once, prostrated by the 
weight of his anguish, and from very heat of 



THE LIFE OF JESUS. 



161 



internal agony, he entreated that the bitter cup 
might be removed ; and to add to all, in the ex- 
treme stage of dissolving life, for a moment his 
spiritual vision seemed to be dimmed, and he cried 
out, ' O my God! why hast thou forsaken me?' 
Such is a brief notice of his sufferings. Let me 
turn to other points " 

" Oh, Mr. Evelyn !" exclaimed Margaret, " how 
can you go on so ! How cold you are ! I cannot 
hear any more ;" and from the posture she had 
maintained, with her eyes fixed on the ground, she 
fell with her face into her hands, and^ followed the 
act with an audible profusion of tears. 

" Do forgive me," said Mr. Evelyn. " I have 
been so long familiar with this most affecting 
history, that I know it does not move me as it 
should." 

14* 



THE GOOD S AM AEITAN. 

BY M. ATHANASE COQUEREL. 

Christ, in giving his divine instructions, knew 
how to conform them to the time, the place, the 
audience ; and we ought to take all these circum- 
stances into consideration. This conversation, in 
which he introduced the parable of the Good 
Samaritan, was probably held in a synagogue, 
in the midst of a curious and attentive assembly, 
after the usual reading of the Law. It was cus- 
tomary at that time for the ruler of the synagogue 
to allow any one who wished to instruct the 
people to speak ; and this doctor, apparently a 
Pharisee, joyfully seized this happy occasion to 
prove Jesus, and seek to put his new doctrine in 
contradiction with the teachings of Moses. With 
this view, he raises his voice, and, taking the tone 
of a disciple who asks for instruction, that he 
might the better conceal that of an adversary who 
is laying a snare, he says to Jesus, with a feigned 
humility : " Master, what shall I do to inherit 
eternal life, that better life which you announce, 
which you promise ?" 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 



163 



Our Lord refers him to the book of Moses, and 
simply replies to him, " What is written in the 
Law, how readest thou ?" 

The Pharisee immediately takes his part, and 
begins either to recite or read those two great 
precepts taken from Leviticus and Deuteronomy, 
which were considered, by universal consent, as 
the summary of the Law. These passages were 
read every day in the synagogues, anothef reason 
why they were quoted by the doctor ; and our 
Saviour, approving his answer, made use of it to 
finish showing him how far his doctrine agreed 
with that of Moses, and confirmed it by that sanc- 
tion so often repeated in the ancient covenant. 

" You have answered well," said he to him ; 
" do these things, and you shall live. ,, 

"Do these things and you shall live!" What 
wisdom, and what simplicity ! The hypocrite 
sees himself beaten by his own weapons, and 
unmasked, so to speak, by his own hands. Far 
from attacking, he thinks only of defending him- 
self. Far from seeking still further to embar- 
rass the wisdom of Christ, he thinks of nothing 
more than saving his own reputation. He cannot 
refuse openly to " do these things," and to follow 



164 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 



these commandments ; and, taking refuge in a 
skilful doubt, which may have the semblance of 
springing from his great knowledge, he pretends 
ignorance, and asks, " But who is my neighbor ?" 

Here an example was necessary. Precepts, 
counsels, reproaches, would have been ineffectual. 
Charity must be placed before the eyes of those 
who did not feel it in their hearts ; they must see 
it at work ; the principle they would despise is 
offered to their minds with the power of a fact. 
Our divine master so judged, and the parable was 
preceded by no reflection. In the first word 
Jesus entered upon the narrative, and transported 
his hearers to the place chosen as the theatre of 
the event. This surprise must have fixed their 
attention in an astonishing manner. " Who is 
my neighbor?" asked the Pharisee, and Jesus im- 
mediately answers him — 

" A man went down from Jerusalem to Jeri- 
cho" 

At this preamble I think I see all faces lifted 
up, all eyes turned upon Jesus. A silence of 
interest and expectation must have reigned on 
every side. The name alone of the place of the 
scene must have struck those who heard him ; 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 



165 



this road, which passed through desert and moun- 
tainous countries, was the terror of travellers, and 
so many robberies and murders were committed 
there, that, in the popular language, it was called 
" the bloody way." 

" A man," said Jesus, " went down from Jeru- 
salem to Jericho, and he fell among thieves, 
who stripped him and wounded him, and went 
away, leaving him half dead." 

In this simple and touching narrative, where 
nothing is omitted, where nothing is exaggerated, 
Jesus (and I call all your attention to this point) 
Jesus tells neither the name, nor the age, nor the 
condition, nor the country, nor the religion, of the 
unfortunate traveller. Is he a young man, a hand- 
some man, an old man, poor or rich, humble or 
illustrious, simple or wise, clothed with public 
functions, or hidden in private life ; is he Greek 
or Roman, Scythian or Barbarian, Jew, Galilean, 
or Samaritan ; is he an Israelite in his religion, 
or a Pagan ; or, undeceived respecting idolatry, is 
he only what is called "a just man, fearing God?" 
The narrative does not say a single word about 
it. Nothing of all this, brethren ; he is a man. 
This is his name and his country, his title and his 
right. He is a man, — it is enough. 



166 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 



Now lend yourselves to the illusion that the 
story must produce. Represent to yourselves 
this unfortunate man, stripped of his clothing, torn 
by wounds, covered with bruises and with blood, 
and abandoned on the side of an unfrequented 
road, — with what emotion, what joy, what hope, 
he will listen to the first human steps which re- 
sound in the distance in the midst of the silence ; 
how he will turn his ear to hear if they are ap- 
proaching ; from moment to moment the sound 
increases ; one moment more, and help will be at 
hand. But suddenly the sound changes its direc- 
tion, — it turns away, it grows fainter, it flies, it 
expires, and the unfortunate man remains with 
his wounds and his sufferings. It was a priest, 
who was going down the same road ; and when he 
saw him, he passed by on the other side. 

You are astonished that a priest shows so little 
charity, and you vainly seek excuses which might, 
in his own eyes, justify his conduct. Excuses ! 
the hard heart never fails to find them. Excuses ! 
do you not see they are abundant ? A priest, 
a member of those twenty-four sacred families, 
who, each in turn, week by week, are on duty in 
the sacred place of the temple, can he stop thus 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 



167 



to assist a stranger, perhaps a Gentile, perhaps 
even a Samaritan ? Beside, this priest is coming 
from Jerusalem, where, doubtless, he has finished 
his week's service, and he is returning to Jericho, 
a sacred city, where a great number of priests 
reside. He is eager to take his accustomed re- 
pose, to refresh himself after his labors ; to find 
himself again in the bosom of his family ; would 
you have him resist this natural impatience, and 
delay his return to his friends and his relatives, 
to lavish on a stranger, assistance which would 
undoubtedly prove useless ? Finally, according 
to the law, no one can touch a dead body, or 
even blood, without contracting a legal impurity. 
Would you have a priest run the risk of making 
himself unclean? No, — and the better to avoid 
this peril, not to raise vain hopes in the unfortu- 
nate man, not to have his groans and his prayers 
fall harshly upon him — the priest, as soon as he 
perceived him, turned away, and passed by on the 
other side of the road. 

Sometime after, a Levite, who followed this 
road, drew near, and stopped by the unfortunate 
wounded man, and looked at him attentively, for 
so the story implies. Brethren, will the subaltern 



168 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 



be more charitable than his superior ? will the 
Levite be more benevolent than the priest ? He 
stops, at least, and looks. But why should a 
simple priest do what a pontiff has not done ? 
Why should men grow better in the outer courts 
than in the holy places ? The Levite, too, may 
fear to make himself unclean. It is true he stops 
and looks at the traveller, but this first movement 
of pity furnishes him a new excuse, more strong 
and more just. He sees that the wounds are still 
open, the blood is still flowing ; it has not had time 
to stop; and the stupor, the weakness, of this un- 
fortunate man, all announces that the murder has 
just been committed, that the robbers could not be 
far off. It was no time for him to stop there, and 
attempt to save this poor man. Could the Levite 
expose himself, by pausing in such a dangerous 
spot ? No; he must, in the first place, provide for 
his own safety. The Levite passed by on the 
other side of the road. And, at this second aban- 
donment, all the hearers, uncertain, perhaps, while 
they were listening to this story, so marked by 
simplicity and truth, whether it was a parable or 
a real incident, are asking themselves whether the 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 



169 



unfortunate traveller was about to perish, without 

help, of exhaustion and suffering 

" But a Samaritan," continues our Saviour. 
" But a Samaritan !" Recollect that Jesus was 
speaking before the Jews, and that an hereditary 
hatred, at once national and religious, separated 
the two nations — recollect the astonishment of 
the woman of Sychar, that Jesus, a Jew, should 
ask of her a little water to drink, after the fatigues 
and the heat of a day's journey under an eastern 
sky. " But a Samaritan, who was journeying, 
came to him, and seeing him, was moved with 
compassion." Count one by one the cares of the 
good Samaritan, and you will be astonished at the 
number of his benefits : he looks ; he moves ; he 
descends quickly from his saddle; he seeks the 
remnant of life in this bleeding body, a lingering 
breath upon those frozen lips ; he binds up all 
those sad wounds with his own garments ; he 
pours out oil and wine, the usual provisions taken 
on a journey ; he places the stranger on his own 
beast, and conducts him into one of those little 
inns established especially for the use of the 
Samaritans, to whom the Jews refused to offer a 
hospitality which they lavished on each other ; 
15 



170 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 



there he yields to no one the care of helping the 
wounded man ; he still " takes care of him," and 
the next day, on departing, he pays beforehand 
for the services which the state of the unhappy 
man requires. " Take care of him, and whatso- 
ever more thou shalt spend, I will repay when I 
come back." 

It did not enter into our Lord's design to deduce 
himself the consequences which resulted from this 
admirable lesson, and it would perhaps be as well 
to follow this divine example, and to leave you to 
the feelings it excites. Jesus wished to close this 
conversation in a fitting manner, by making the 
hypocrite himself, who had pretended ignorance 
of the most holy law, render homage to the act 
of charity ; and he says to the Pharisee who had 
questioned him : " Which of the three, thinkest 
thou, was the neighbor to him who fell among 
thieves'?" "It was," replies the doctor, forced to 
instruct himself, (and here remark, that, doubtless 
from pride and obstinacy, he avoids pronouncing 
the odious name of Samaritan, and designates 
without naming him,) "it was he that showed 
mercy to him." 

Then Jesus, leaving his pride to be subdued 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 



171 



with the weight of this confession, which it was 
impossible to avoid or retain, Jesus said to him, 
" Go thou and do likewise." 

" Do likewise. " This command of our Saviour 
is addressed to us all, as well as to this doctor of 
Israel. 

Take care, however, not to deceive yourselves 
on the bearing of this example, and the force of 
this commandment. Do not think you are only 
to imitate the good Samaritan of the parable, on 
a similar occasion, and bind up, as best you may, 
wounds that are still bleeding. Do not think that 
you are to learn merely how to uphold a fallen 
brother, to relieve a suffering brother, to save a 
perishing brother ; these are services which occa- 
sionally are rendered by the most insensible, the 
most vindictive, the most unkind men ; and this 
sublime parable is not reduced to such a barren 
lesson, such a common beneficence ; there are 
greater things here. Remember the question of 
the Pharisee, — "Who is my neighbor?'' — aques- 
tion of which this whole story is the answer. 
Recollect that Jesus took care not to give the 
least information about the wounded traveller, 
and you will confess that the whole design of this 



172 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 



discourse of our Lord is only to teach us who is 
our neighbor ; you will confess that the sublime, 
the magnificent truth to which by force you must 
arrive is, that your neighbor is everybody ; and 
there does not breathe on the face of the earth a 
man, whoever he may be, to whom we can refuse 
this sacred title, this title which is his by divine 
right, this ineffaceable title with which God him- 
self has endowed him ; any charity which makes 
exceptions to this is not the true charity of the 
Gospel, and any exception is an error without 
foundation ; an iniquity without excuse, which 
violates, at the same time, the tender precepts of 
charity, and the severe laws of justice. Will 
you then claim the right to separate men at will, 
according to your caprices and your prejudices, 
your interests and your passions — to consider, as 
it suits you, some as your neighbors, and others 
as strangers ? They are all equal ; they all hold 
the same relation to you ; they are all the children 
of the same God ; they are your brethren; in spite 
of yourself, this universal relationship cannot be 
denied. Differences there are, certainly; but ex- 
ceptions, very certainly, there are none. Jesus 
does not demand of you to love him whose exist- 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 



173 



ence is hardly known to you, and with whom you 
will have no intimate relation till you meet him 
in heaven ; he does not require you to love him 
in the same manner as you love him whose hand 
has pressed yours in close embrace a thousand 
times. Jesus does not require you to love the 
human race in the same manner you love your 
family, the world as you love your country, and 
Gentiles in the same manner as Christians ; but 
he requires you to love all men, each in his order : 
and the danger here is not of loving too much 
our fellow citizens, our friends, our relations ; 
when these holy and noble affections are purified 
and strengthened by faith, they strengthen in 
their turn, far from banishing from our souls, 
those more distant affections which bind us to 
our equals, and which will be drawn more closely 
together in heaven. 

Let us remember that the good Samaritan, 
when he saw his neighbor in the wounded travel- 
ler, knew nothing of him. Let us remember that 
it is impossible to love God without loving men, 
and that our love for each other is the sign by 
which our Lord has promised to acknowledge 
us for his disciples, united for a short time on 



174 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 



earth, to be forever united in his presence in the 
heavens ; and, meantime, moved with admiration 
at the sublime model which your divine master 
proposes to your charity, go ye then and do like- 
wise. 



THE LORD OF THE VINEYARD. 



Who came at the eleventh hour, 

And to their tasks were true, 
And labored, each as he had power, 

Received, — each man his due. 

Who came when day was breaking bright, 

And labored all day through, 
Till evening melted into night, 

Received, — each man his due. 

These looked at those, — those looked at these, 
As from their Lord they came, — 

The dues of those, — the dues of these, — 
They saw, were just the same. 

For those and these God's children are, 

Born for eternity ; 
Moments of time could not compare 
With lives which live for aye, 
And souls whose every hope is fixed above 
Have no less due from God- — than all a Father's 
love. 



ALMS-GIVING. 

FROM MILNE S' POETRY FOR THE PEOPLE. 

When Poverty, with mien of shame, 

The sense of Pity seeks to touch, — 
Or, bolder, makes the simple claim 

That I have nothing, you have much, — 
Believe not either man or book 

That bids you close the opening hand, 
And with reproving speech and look 

Your first and free intent withstand. 

It may be that the tale you hear 

Of pressing wants and losses borne 
Is heapt or colored for your ear, 

And tatters for the purpose worn ; 
But surely Poverty has not 

A sadder need than this, to wear 
A mask still meaner than her lot, 

Compassion's scanty food to share. 

It may be that you err to give 

What will but tempt to further spoil 

Those who in low content would live 
On theft of others' time and toil ; 



ALMS-GIVING. 



177 



Yet sickness may have broke or bent 
The active frame or vigorous will, — 

Or hard occasion may prevent 
Their exercise of humble skill. 

It may be that the suppliant's life 

Has lain on many an evil way 
Of fond delight and brutal strife, 

And lawless deeds that shun the day ; 
But how can any gauge of yours 

The depth of that temptation try ? — 
What man resists — what man endures — 

Is open to one only eye. 

Why not believe the homely letter 

That all you give will God restore ! 
The poor man may deserve it better, 

And surely, surely, wants it more ; 
Let but the rich man do his part, 

And, whatsoe'er the issue be 
To those who ask, his answering heart 

Will gain and grow in sympathy. 



CONSTANCY OF CHARACTER. 

BY AUBREY DE VERE. 

Man's mind should be of marble, not of clay ; 
A rock-hewn temple, large, majestic, bare ; 
Not decked with gew-gaws, but with life-long care, 
And toil heroic, shaped to stand for aye : 
Not like those plaster baubles of the day, 
In which the lightest breath of praise or prayer 
Crumbles the gauds wherewith they garnished are: 
In which we dare not think, and cannot pray ; 
In which God will not dwell. O Constancy ! 
Where thou art wanting, all our gifts are naught. 
Friend of the martyrs, — both of those who die, 
And those who live, — beneath that steadfast eye 
The breast-plates and the beaming helms were 
wrought 

Of all our far-famed Christian chivalry ! 



DUTY AND IMMORTALITY. 

FROM J. G. FICHTE. 

Perfection has but one form ; it is equal to 
itself : could all men become perfect, could they 
attain their highest and ultimate end, they would 
all be equal to each other, — they would be only 
one — but one single subject. But in society each 
strives to make others perfect, at least according 
to his own standard of perfection, — to raise them 
to the ideal of humanity which he has formed. 
Thus the last, highest end of society is perfect 
unity and unanimity of all its possible members. 
But since the attainment of this end supposes the 
attainment of the destination of each individual 
man — the attainment of absolute perfection ; so 
it is quite as impossible as the latter — it is unat- 
tainable, unless man were to lay aside his human- 
ity, and become God. Perfect unity with all the 
individuals of his race is thus indeed the ultimate 
end, but not the vocation, of man in society. 

But to approach nearer this end, — constantly 
to approach nearer to it, — this he can and should 



180 



DUTY AND IMMORTALITY. 



do. This approximation towards perfect unity 
and unanimity with all men may be called co- 
operation. Thus co-operation, growing ever 
firmer at its centre, and ever wider at its circum- 
ference, is the true vocation of man in society ; — 
but such a co-operation is only possible by means 
of ever-growing improvement ; for it is only in 
relation to their ultimate destination that men are 
at one, or can become united. We may there- 
fore say, that mutual improvement — improve- 
ment of ourselves by the freely admitted action 
of others upon us, and improvement of others by 
our reaction upon them as upon free beings, — is 
our vocation in society. 

And in order to fulfil this vocation, and fulfil it 
always more thoroughly, we need a qualification 
which can only be acquired and improved by 
culture ; and indeed a qualification of a double 
nature ; an ability to give, or to act upon others 
as upon free beings ; — and an openness to re- 
ceive, or to derive the greatest advantage from 
the action of others upon us. Of both we shall 
speak particularly in the proper place. We must 
especially strive to acquire the latter when we 
possess the former in a high degree ; otherwise 



DUTY AND IMMORTALITY. 



181 



we cease to advance, and consequently retro- 
grade. Seldom is any man so perfect but he 
may be much improved through the agency of 
any other man, in some perhaps apparently un- 
important or neglected point of culture. 

I know few more sublime ideas than the idea 
of this universal inter-action of the whole human 
race on itself ; this ceaseless life and activity, this 
eager emulation to give and to receive, — the 
noblest strife in which man can take a part ; this 
general indentation of countless wheels into each 
other, whose common motive power is freedom ; 
and the beautiful harmony which is the result of 
all. " Whoever thou* art" may each of us say — 
" whoever thou art, if thou bear the form of man, 
thou too art a member of this great common- 
wealth; through what countless media soever our 
mutual influence may be transmitted, still by 
that title I act upon thee, and thou on me; no 
one who bears the stamp of reason on his front, 
however rudely impressed, exists in vain for me. 
But I know thee not, — thou knowest not me! 
Oh ! so surely as we have a common calling to 
be good, — ever to become better, — so surely — 
though millions of ages may first pass away — 
16 



182 



DUTY AND IMMORTALITY. 



(what is time ! ) — so surely shall a period at last 
arrive when I may receive thee too into my sphere 
of action, — when I may do good to thee, and 
receive good from thee in return ; when my heart 
may be united to thine also, by the fairest possible 
bond, — a mutual interchange of free and gener- 
ous love." 

jt J£ 
•JP "/v* wv" *7v* "7V* 

When we contemplate the idea now unfold- 
ed, even without reference to ourselves, we see 
around us a community in which no one can labor 
for himself without at the same time laboring for 
his fellow men, or can labor for others without at 
the same time laboring for himself ; where the 
success of one member is the success of all, and 
the loss of one a loss to all ; a picture which, by 
the harmony it reveals in the manifold^ diversity 
of being, introduces a cordial feeling of satisfac- 
tion to the mind, and powerfully raises the soul 
above the things of time. 

But the interest is heightened when we turn 
our thoughts to ourselves, and contemplate our- 
selves as members of this great spiritual commu- 
nity. The feeling of our dignity and our power 
is increased when we say, — what each of us may 



DUTY AND IMMORTALITY. 



183 



say, — " My existence is not in vain and aimless ; 
I am a necessary link in the great chain of being 
which reaches from the awakening of the first 
man to perfect consciousness of his existence, 
onward through eternity ; all the great and wise 
and noble that have ever appeared among men, — 
those benefactors of the human race whose names 
I find recorded in the world's history, and the 
many others whose benefits have outlived their 
names, — all have labored for me ; I have entered 
into their labors ; on this earth, where they dwelt, 
I follow their footsteps, which scattered blessings 
as they went. I may, as soon as I will, assume 
the sublime task which they have resigned, of 
making our common brotherhood ever wiser 
and happier ; I may continue to build where they 
had to cease their labors ; I may bring nearer to 
its completion the glorious temple which they had 
to leave unfinished." 

" But," some one may say, " I, too, like them, 
must rest from my labors." Oh ! this is the 
sublimest thought of all ! If I assume this noble 
task, I can never reach its end ; and so surely as 
it is my vocation to assume it, I can never cease 
to act, and hence can never cease to be. That 



184 



DUTY AND IMMORTALITY. 



which men call Death cannot interrupt my activ- 
ity ; for my work must go on to its completion, 
and it cannot be completed in Time ; — hence my 
existence is limited by no time, and I am Eternal; 
— with the assumption of this great task, I have 
also laid hold of Eternity. I raise my head 
boldly towards the threatening rock, the raging 
flood, or the fiery tempest, and say — " I am eter- 
nal and I defy your might ! Break all upon me ! 
and thou Earth, and thou Heaven, mingle in the 
wild tumult ! — and all the elements, foam and 
fret yourselves, and crush in your conflict the last 
atom of the body which I call mine ! My Will, 
secure in its own firm purpose, shall soar undis- 
turbed and bold over the wreck of the universe ; 
for I have entered upon my vocation, and it is 
more enduring than ye are ; it is eternal, and I 
am eternal, like it !" 



AROUSE THEE, SOUL. 



BY ROBERT NICOLL. 



Arouse thee, Soul ! 
God made thee not to sleep 
Thy hour of earth in doing nought away ; 

He gave thee power to keep ; — 
Oh ! use it for His glory while you may ! 
Arouse thee, Soul ! 

Arouse thee, Soul ! 
Oh ! there is much to do 
For thee, if thou would' st work for human kind; — 

The misty future through, 
A greatness looms — 'tis mind, awakened mind ! 
Arouse thee, Soul ! 

Arouse thee, Soul ! 
Shake off thy sluggishness, 
As shakes the lark the dew-drop from his wing ; 

Make but one error less, — 
One truth thine offering to mind's altar bring ! 
Arouse thee, Soul ! 
16 * 



186 



AROUSE THEE, SOUL ! 



Arouse thee, Soul ! 
Be what thou surely art, 
An emanation from the Deity, — 

A flutter of that heart 
Which fills all nature, sea, and earth, and sky ! 
Arouse thee, Soul ! 

Arouse thee, Soul ! 
And let the body do 
Some worthy deed for human happiness ; 

To join, when life is through, 
Unto thy name, that angels both may bless ! 
Arouse thee, Soul ! 

Arouse thee, Soul ! 
Leave nothings of the earth ; — 
And if the body be not strong, to dare 

To blessed thoughts give birth, 
High as yon heaven, pure as heaven's air, 
Arouse thee, Soul ! 

Arouse thee, Soul ! 
Or sleep for evermore, 
And be what all nonentities have been ; 

Crawl on till life is o'er : 
If to be aught but this thou e'er dost mean, 
Arouse thee, Soul ! 



WE ARE BRETHREN A'. 

BY ROBERT NICOLL. 

A happy bit hame this auld world would be, 
If men when they 're here could make shift to 
agree, 

An' ilk said to his neighbor, in cottage an' ha', 
"Come, gi'e me your hand — we are brethren a'." 

I ken na why ane wi' anither should fight, 
When to 'gree would make a' body cosie an' right ; 
When man meets wi' man, 't is the best way ava, 
To say "Gi'e me your hand — we are brethren a'." 

My coat is a coarse ane, an' yours may be fine; 
And I maun drink water while you may drink 
wine ; 

But we baith ha'e a leal heart, unspotted, to shaw ; 
Sae gi'e me your hand — we are brethren a'. 

The knave ye would scorn, the unfaithfu' deride ; 
Ye would stand like a rock, wi' the truth on your 
side ; 

Sae would I, an' nought else would I value a straw; 
Then gi'e me your hand — we are brethren a'. 



188 



WE ARE BRETHREN a\ 



Ye would scorn to do fausely by woman or man ; 
I haud by the right, aye, as weel as I can ; 
We are ane in our joys, our affections, an' a'; 
Come, gi'e me your hand — we are brethren a'. 

Your mither has lo'ed you as mithers can lo'e, 
An' mine has done for me what mithers can do; 
We are ane high an' laigh, an' we shouldna be twa! 
Sae gi'e me your hand — we are brethren a'. 

We love the same simmer day, sunny and fair ; 
Hame! — oh, how we love it, an' a' that are there ! 
Frae the pure air o' heaven the same life we draw ; 
Come, gi'e me your hand — we are brethren a'. 

Frail, shakin' Auld Age will soon come o'er us 
baith, 

An' creeping alang at his back will be Death ; 
Syne into the same mither-yird we will fa', 
Come, gi'e me your hand — we are brethren a'. 



NOT ON A PRAYERLESS BED. 

Not on a prayerless bed, not on a prayerless bed, 
Compose thy weary limbs to rest ; 
For they alone are blest 
With balmy sleep 
Whom angels keep. 
Not, though by care oppressed, 

Or thought of anxious sorrow, 
Or though in many a coil perplexed 
For coming morrow — 
Lay not thy head 1 
On prayerless bed ! 

For who can say, when sleep thine eyes shall close, 
That earthly cares and woes 
To thee may e'er return ? 
Rouse up, my soul ! 
Slumber control, 
And let thy lamps burn brightly ; 

So shall thine eyes discern 
Things pure and lightly ; 



190 



NOT ON A PRAYERLESS BED. 



Taught by the spirit beam 
Never on a prayerless bed 
To lay thine unblest head. 

Bethink thee, slumbering soul, of all that's promised 
•To faith in holy prayer ! 
Lives there within the breast 
A worm that gives unrest ? 

Ask peace from Heaven — 

Peace will be given : 
Humble self-love and pride 
Before the Crucified, 
Who for thy sins has died ; 

Nor lay thy weary head 

Upon a prayerless bed ! 

Hast thou no pining want, no wish, nor care, 
That calls for holy prayer ? 
Has thy day been so bright, 
That, in its flight, 

There is no trace of sorrow ? 
And art thou sure to-morrow 
Will be like this and more 
Abundant ? Dost thou lay up in store, 
And still make place for more ? 



NOT ON A PRAYERLESS BED. 



191 



Thou fool ! this very night 
Thy soul may wing its flight. 

Hast thou no being than thyself more dear, 
Who tracks the ocean deep, 
And when storms sweep 

The wintry skies, 
For whom thou wak'st and sleepest? — 
Oh ! when thy pangs are deepest, 
Seek there the covenant ark of prayer, 
For He that slumbereth not, is there ! 
His ears are open to thy cries ; 
Oh ! then on prayerless bed 
Lay not thy thoughtless head ! 

Hast thou no loved one than thyself more dear, 
Who claims a prayer from thee ? 
Some who ne'er bend the knee, 
From infidelity ? 
Think, if by prayer they're brought — 
Thy prayer, to be forgiven, 
And making peace with Heaven, 
Unto the Cross they 're led ! 

Oh ! for their sakes, on prayerless bed 
Lay not thy unblest head ! 



192 



NOT ON A PRAYERLESS BED . 



Arouse thee, weary soul ! nor yield to slumber, 
Till in communion blest, 
With the Elect ye rest — 

Those souls of countless number ; 

And with them raise 

The note of praise 
Reaching from earth to heaven, 
Chosen, redeemed, forgiven : 

So lay thy happy head, 

Prayer-crowned, on blessed bed ! 



CONSTANCY. 

BY GEORGE HERBERT. 

Who is the honest man ? 
He that doth still and strongly good pursue, — 
To God, his neighbor, and himself most true ; 

Whom neither force nor fawning, can 
Unpin, or wrench from giving all their due. 

Whose honesty is not 
So loose or easy, that a ruffling wind 
Can blow away, or glittering look it blind ; 

Who rides his sure and even trot, 
While the world now rides by, now lags behind. 

Who, when great trials come, 
Nor seeks nor shuns them ; but doth calmly stay 
Till he the thing and the example weigh ; 

All being brought into a sum, 
What place or person calls for, he doth pay. 
17 



194 



CONSTANCY. 



Whom none can work or woo 
To use in anything a trick or sleight ; 
For above all things he abhors deceit. 

His words and works and fashion too 
All of a piece, and all are clear and straight. 

Who never melts or thaws 
At close temptations ; when the day is done, 
His goodness sets not, but in dark can run ; 

The sun to others writeth laws, 
And is their virtue ; virtue is his sun. 

Who, when he is to treat 
With sick folks, women, those whom passions sway, 
Allows for that, and keeps his constant way ; 

Whom others' faults do not defeat ; 
But though men fail him, yet his part doth play. 

Whom nothing can procure, 
When' the wide world runs bias, from his will, 
To writhe his limbs, and share, not mend the ill. 

This is the marksman, safe and sure, 
Who still is right, and prays to be so still. 



PAST FRIENDS. 



BY F. W. TABER. 

Are there such things as friends that pass away 'f 
When each fresh opening season of our life, 
Through the dim-struggling crowd and weary 
strife, 

Brings kindred spirits nigh, whom we would pray 
Might live with us, and by our death-bed stay, — 
Do these, our chosen ones, sink down at last 
Into the common grave of visions past ? 
Ah ! there are few men in the world can say 
They had a dream which they do not dream still ; 
Few fountains in the heart which cease to play, 
When those whose touch evoked them at their will 
Sit there no more : and I my dreams fulfil 
When to high Heaven my tongue still nightly bears 
Old names, like broken music, in my prayers. 



DEATH AND SLEEP. 

FROM KRUMM AC HE R . 

The brother angels of Sleep and of Death 
wandered over the earth. It was evening. They 
rested on a little hill, not far from the habitation 
of man. A melancholy stillness reigned, and the 
evening clock in the distant valley was not heard. 

Silently, as they were wont, sat the two benev- 
olent genii of Humanity, in a tender embrace, and 
already night drew near. 

Then the angel of Sleep arose from his mossy 
couch, and scattered with a gentle hand the 
invisible seed of slumber. The evening wind 
wafted it to the silent dwelling of the wearied 
husbandman. Now sweet sleep embraced the 
inhabitants of the rural cottage, — the gray-haired 
man who leans upon his staff, and the infant in 
the cradle. The sick forgot their pain, the sad 
their sorrow, the poor their wants. Every eye 
was closed. 

After his labor was accomplished, the benevo- 
lent angel of Sleep again lay down with his seri- 



DEATH AND SLEEP. 



197 



ous brother. "When the dawn appears," said he, 
in a tone of cheerful innocence, " man will praise 
me as his friend and benefactor ! O, it is sweet 
to do good unseen and in secret ! How happy 
are we, the invisible messengers of the good 
Spirit ! How lovely is our silent work !" 

Thus spake the friendly angel of Sleep. The 
angel of Death regarded him with silent grief, 
and a tear, such as immortals weep, stood in his 
large dark eye. "Alas!" said he, "that I cannot, 
like you, rejoice in the gratitude of man ! The 
earth calls me her enemy, and the disturber of 
her joy." 

" O my brother," replied the angel of Sleep, 
" will not the good, on awaking, discover in you 
their friend and benefactor, and gratefully bless 
you ? Are we not brethren, and the messengers 
of one father ? " 

Thus he spake : and the eye of the angel of 
Death brightened, and they tenderly embraced 
each other. 

17* 



THE SICK CHILD'S DREAM. 

BY ROBERT NICOLL. 

! mither, mither, my head was sair, 
And my een wi' tears were weet ; 

But the pain has gane for evermair, — 

Sae, mither, dinna greet ; 
And I ha'e had sic a bonnie dream, 

Since last asleep I fell, 
O' a' that is holy an' gude to name, 

That I 've wakened my dream to tell. 

1 thought on the morn o' a simmer day 

That awa' through the clouds I flew, 
While my silken hair did wavin' play 

'Mang breezes steeped in dew ; 
And the happy things o' life and light 

Were around my gowden way, 
As they stood in their parent Heaven's sight 

In the hames o' nightless day. 

An' sangs o' love that nae tongue may tell 
Frae their hearts cam' flowin' free, 

Till the stars stood still, while alang did swell 
The plaintive melodie ; 



THE SICK CHILD'S DREAM. 



199 



And ane o' them sang wi' my mither's voice, 

Till through my heart did gae 
That chanted hymn o' my bairnhood's choice, 

Sae dowie, saft, an' wae. 

Thae happy things o' the glorious sky 

Did lead me far away, 
Where the stream o' life rins never dry, 

Where naething kens decay ; 
And they laid me down in a mossy bed, 

Wi* curtains o' spring-leaves green; 
And the name o' God they praying said, 

And a light came o'er my een. 

And I saw the earth that I had left, 

And I saw my mither there ; 
And I saw her grieve that she was bereft 

O' the bairn she thought sae fair ; 
And I saw her pine till her spirit fled — 

Like a bird to its young one's nest — 
To that land of love ; and my head was laid 

Again on my mither's breast. 

And mither, ye took me by the hand, 

As ye were wont to do ; 
And your loof, sae saft and white, I faud 

Laid on my caller brow ; 



200 



THE SICK CHILD'S DREAM. 



And my lips you kissed, and my curling hair 
You round your fingers wreathed ; 

And I kent that a happy mither's prayer 
Was o'er me silent breathed — 

And we wandered through that happy land, 

That was gladly glorious a'; 
The dwellers there were an angel-band, 

And their voices o' love did fa' 
On our ravished ears, like the deein' tones 

O' an anthem far away, 
In a star-lit hour when the woodland moans 

That its green is turned to gray. 

And, mither, amang the sorrowless there, 

We met my brithers three ; 
And your bonnie May, my sister fair, 

And a happy bairn was she ; 
And she led me aw a' 'mang living flowers, 

As on earth she aft has done ; 
And thegither we sat in the holy bowers 

Where the blessed rest aboon. 

And she tauld me I was in Paradise, 

Where God in love doth dwell — 
Where the weary rest, and the mourner's voice 

Forgets its warld-wail ; 



THE SICK CHILD'S DREAM. 



201 



And she tauld me they kent na dule nor care, 

And bade me be glad to dee, 
That yon sinless land, and the dwellers there, 

Might be hame and kin to me. 

Then sweetly a voice came on my ears, 

Ane it sounded sae holily, 
That my heart grew saft, and blabs o' tears 

Sprang up in my sleepin' e'e ; 
And my inmost soul was sairly moved 

Wi' its mair than mortal joy ; — 
'T was the voice o' Him wha bairnies loved 

That waukened your dreamin' boy. 



THE NEWLY DEAD. 



BY JOHN STERLING. 

Time more than earthly o'er this hour prevails, 
While thus I stand beside the newly dead ; 

My heart is raised in awe, in terror quails, 
Before these relics, whence the life is fled. 

That face, so well beloved, is senseless now, 
And lies a shrunken mass of common clay ; 

No more shall thought inspire the pulseless brow, 
Or laughter round the mouth keep holiday. 

In vain affection yearns to own as man 

This clod turned over by the plough of death ; 

The sharpened nose, the frozen eyes, we scan, 
And wondering think the heap had human breath. 

An hour ago its lightest looks or throbs 
Impelled in me the bosom's ample tide ; 

Its farewell words awakened sighs and sobs, 
To me more vivid seemed than all beside. 



THE NEWLY DEAD. 



203 



Now not a worm is crawling o'er the earth 
But shows than this an impulse more divine ; 

And wandering lost in stunned reflection's dearth, 
I only feel what total loss is mine. 

Cold hand, I touch thee ! Perished friend ! I know 
What years of mutual joy are gone with thee ; 

And yet from these benumbed remains there flow 
Calm thoughts that first with chastened hopes 
agree. 

How strange is death to life ! and yet how sure 
The law which dooms each living thing to die ! 

Whate'er is outward cannot long endure, 
And all that lasts eludes the subtlest eye. 

Because the eye is only made to spell 

The grosser garb and failing husk of things ; 

The vital strengths and streams that inlier dwell, 
Our faith divines amid their secret springs. 

The stars will sink as fade the lamps of earth, 
The earth be lost as vapor seen no more, 

And all around that seems of oldest birth 
Abides one destined day — and all is o'er. 



204 



THE NEWLY DEAD. 



Himalah's piles, like heaps of autumn leaves, 
Will one day spread along the winds of space, 

And each strong stamp of man the world receives 
Will flit like steps in sand, without a trace. 

Yet something still will somewhere needs abide 
Of all whose being e'er has filled our thought ; 

In different shapes to other worlds may glide, 
But still must live as more than empty nought. 

The trees, decayed, their parent soil will feed, 
Whence trees may grow more fair than grew 
the first ; 

To worlds destroyed so worlds may still succeed, 
And still the earliest may have been the worst. 

Thus, never desperate, muse believing men: 

But what, O Power Divine ! shall men become ? 

This pale memorial meets my gaze again, 
And grief a moment bids my hopes be dumb. 

Not thus, O God ! desert us ! Rather I 

Should sink at once to unremembering clay, 

And close my sight on thy translucent sky, 
Than yield my soul to death a helpless prey ; 



THE NEWLY DEAD. 



205 



Oh ! rather bear beyond the date of stars 

All torments heaped that nerve and soul can feel, 

Than but one hour believe destruction mars 
Without a hope the life our breasts reveal. 

Bold is the life and deep and vast in man, 

A flood of being poured unchecked from Thee ; 

To Thee returned by Thine eternal plan, 

When tried and trained Thy will unveiled to see. 

The spirit leaves the body's wondrous frame, 
That frame itself a world of strength and skill ; 

The nobler inmate new abodes will claim, 
In every change to Thee aspiring still. 

Although from darkness born, to darkness fled, 
We know that light beyond surrounds the whole ; 

The man survives, though the weird-corpse be dead, 
And He who dooms the flesh redeems the soul. 
18 



EASTEB DAY. 



BY REV. JOHN KEBLE. 



" And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said 
unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead 1 ? He is not here, but is 
risen." — St. Luke, xxiv. 5, 6. 

Oh day of days ! shall hearts set free 
No " minstrel rapture" find for thee ? 
Thou art the sun of other days, — 
They shine by giving back thy rays. 

Enthroned in thy sovereign sphere 
Thou shed'st thy light on all the year ; 
Sundays by thee more glorious break, 
An Easter Day in every week ; 

And week-days, following in their train, 
The fulness of thy blessing gain, 
Till all, both resting and employ, 
Be one Lord's day of holy joy. 

Then wake, my soul, to high desires, 
And earlier light thine altar fires ; 
The world some hours is on her way, 
Nor thinks on thee, thou blessed day ; 



EASTER DAY. 



Or if she think, it is in scorn ; 
The vernal light of Easter morn 
To her dark gaze no brighter seems 
Than Reason's or the Law's pale beams. 

" Where is your Lord ?" she scornful asks ; 
" Where is his hire ? We know his tasks. 
Sons of a King ye boast to be ; 
Let us your crowns and treasures see." 

We in the words of truth reply, 
(An angel brought them from the sky,) 
" Our crown, our treasure, is not here, — 
'T is stored above the highest sphere ; 

" Methinks your wisdom guides amiss, 
To seek on earth a Christian's bliss ; 
We watch not now the lifeless stone ; 
Our only Lord is risen and gone." 

Yet even the lifeless stone is dear, 
For thoughts of him who late lay here ; 
And the base world, now Christ hath died, 
Ennobled is, and glorified. 

No more a charnel-house, to fence 
The relics of lost innocence, 



EASTER DAY. 



A vault of ruin and decay ; — 

The imprisoning stone is rolled away ; 

'Tis now a cell, where angels use 
To come and go with heavenly news, 
And in the ears of mourners say, 
" Come, see the place where Jesus lay ;" 

'T is now a fane, where Love can find 
Christ everywhere embalmed and shrined ; 
Aye gathering up memorials sweet, 
Where'er she sets her duteous feet. 

Oh ! joy to Mary first allowed, 
When roused from weeping o'er his shroud, 
By his own calm, soul-soothing tone, 
Breathing her name as still his own ! 

Joy to the faithful three renewed, 
As their glad errand they pursued ! 
Happy, who so Christ's word convey, 
That he may meet them on their way ! 

So is it still to holy tears, 
In lonely hours, Christ risen appears ; 
In social hours who Christ would see, 
Must turn all tasks to Charity. 



PAUL BEFORE FESTUS AND AGRIPPA. 



BY M. ATHANASE COQUEREL. 

It is after so much trouble and danger, — at a 
time when St. Paul could hope to await in peace 
the moment of quitting Judea for Italy, — at such a 
time he is called upon to undergo a severe trial, — 
to appear before Festus, Agrippa and Berenice, 
together with the wordly crowd by which eastern 
kings are surrounded ; that idle crowd, who are 
always looking for scenes. How this unexpected 
call to appear before an assembly, so imposing to 
an ordinary man, would have troubled a criminal 
whose conscience had not been at rest, — a chief 
of a sect whose preaching had not been sincere ! 
If St. Paul, whose fellow-citizens seek to silence 
him or put him to death, is really a criminal who 
is to be punished, or an enthusiast who is to be 
repressed — thus brought before a tribunal pre- 
sided over by a Hebrew monarch, instructed in 
the laws of the Hebrews, one question, one error, 
may destroy him ; one word betray him ; and 
when he shall arrive before Csesar, the arbiter 
18* 



210 PAUL BEFORE FESTUS AND AGRIPPA. 

of his fate, letters from Festus, arriving before 
him, will denounce him as a criminal worthy of 
death, or a fanatic worthy of contempt. St. Paul 
is calm. Festus, Agrippa, Berenice, and those 
curious spectators who crowd around, are not 
judges or witnesses whom he dreads, but brothers 
whom he would lead to Jesus. Festus has given 
the order, and the prison is to be opened. On 
coming out of a prison, Paul is to find the 
most magnificent assembly to which he has ever 
preached Jesus Christ and him crucified. The 
hour has come — the crowd has assembled ; and 
St. Paul is about to appear. 

I have seen in courts where human justice pro- 
nounces its decrees, — when the public voice, in 
advance of the judicial decree, absolved the un- 
fortunate man, unjustly suspected of a crime, — I 
have seen, in the midst of profound silence, the 
crowd separate with respect, and open a passage 
for him, all eyes fixed upon him, all hearts moved 
at sight of him ; soon have I heard a murmur 
of interest reach to the extreme ranks of the 
assembly ; and I have seen the judge on his seat 
shudder at having to absolve innocence, and the 
exasperated guards holding up the weight of 



PAUL BEFORE FESTUS AND AGRIPPA. 211 

the chains of their captive. Oh ! if this court 
had been the court of Festus, if this accused 
had been the apostle of the Saviour, we should 
not have felt a vain pity for him who gloried 
in being found worthy to suffer for the name of 
Jesus ; — with what religious composure should 
we have been present at this solemn judgment ; 
with what attention should we have listened to 
his defence ; with what zeal should we have 
cried out : " Tell us what the Lord God has 
said to thee ; we will hear thee and obey it ! " 
This is not the answer prepared for him ; these 
are not the sentiments which his presence will 
excite. The crowd presses, it opens, and St. 
Paul appears ! I figure to myself the different 
impressions which his entrance into this assem- 
bly will produce. Here I see the insulting smile 
of disdain ; there, the greedy look of curiosity : 
here, the inattention of indifference ; there, the 
icy welcome of prejudice ; more than one Na- 
thanael ready to say, " Can any good thing come 
from the chief of a sect of Nazarenes ? " more 
than one Pilate ready to interrupt him by de- 
manding "What is truth?" and perhaps hidden 
in the crowd, a Gamaliel, who thinks within 



212 PAUL BEFORE FESTUS AND AGRIPPA. 

himself, If this work be of man, it will come 
to nought ; but if it be of God, ye cannot over- 
throw it. Calm, without affecting security, hum- 
ble, without affecting modesty, throwing around 
him that tranquil and serene look which belongs 
to innocence, the servant of Jesus passes through 
the thick ranks of the audience. Some words 
of Festus open the assembly ; and, intrusted with 
the care of interrogating the apostle, " Thou 
art permitted," says the Jewish king to him, 
" to speak for thyself." What happier occasion 
could be offered to St. Paul to confound his 
cowardly accusers, to challenge them to prove 
their calumnies, and to make clear his innocence? 
Heard by so large an audience, his defence will 
fly from mouth to mouth through all Festus' 
kingdom, and even his enemies at Jerusalem will 
be forced to hear it. The opinion which this 
numerous assembly shall form of him will dictate 
to Festus the information which he is to give to 
CaBsar. If the apostle does not make the best 
of this opportunity, it will never be repeated ; St. 
Paul will only find at Rome a prejudiced judge, 
and at Rome there are prisons and chains, as 
well as at Cesarea. 



PAUL BEFORE FESTUS AND AGRIPPA. 213 

" Thou art permitted to speak for thyself," said 
Agrippa to him. But what does the apostle care 
for his prison and his chains? It is not the name 
of Paul which he wishes to defend ; — it is that of 
Jesus. He thinks less of justifying his conduct 
than his doctrine. He speaks no more of it than 
the interest of the Gospel demands. He dwells 
upon the resurrection of the dead — the dogma 
which finds least favor among his audience. He 
tells the tale, so shameful for himself, of that 
Saul who persecuted the church ; he draws the 
picture of himself on the road to Damascus, 
felled to the ground by a divine hand, before 
that celestial brightness from which comes the 
voice of his Master. In finishing this discourse, 
where we meet the orator of the Areopagus 
with all his sublimity, he represents his Saviour 
as the " first that should rise from the dead, 
showing light unto the people ;" and by one of 
those beautiful turns of eloquence which the 
sacred books show us, the accused in chains, 
with that force of persuasion which emanates 
from the Holy Spirit, calling upon his judge upon 
the throne as a witness to the truth, cries out, 
" King Agrippa, believest thou the prophets ? I 



214 PAUL BEFORE FESTUS AND AGRIPPA. 

know that thou believest ! " and causes him to 
answer " Almost thou persuadest me to be a 
Christian!" 

Never has the Gospel gained a more noble vic- 
tory. Here is the decree which the King of Gali- 
lee utters ! Here are the instructions which Fes- 
tus can transmit to Csesar ! The accused ends by 
interrupting the judge, and the judge humbles 
himself at the word of the accused. Let your 
imagination gather strength, and present to itself 
the effect which must have been produced upon 
the attentive crowd by the exclamation of Agrip- 
pa! Paint the surprise — the general emotion! 
Listen to the profound silence which succeeds ! 
See all faces turned from Agrippa to Paul, from 
Paul to Agrippa ! The Holy Spirit has spoken ; 
and the powers of earth have glorified it, and all 
hearts have been moved in holy wonder : — so 
were the apostles moved with wonder when they 
saw it descend in tongues of flame upon their 
bowed heads. 

But let us examine this picture nearer, and let 
us seek to discover what must have been the sen- 
timents excited in the soul of Paul, of Festus, and 
of Agrippa. 



PAUL BEFORE FESTUS AND AGRIPPA. 215 

St. Paul is the same after his victory as before 
the battle. He alone raises his voice in the bosom 
of religious silence. St. Paul is a Christian ; 
Faith has triumphed ; Charity, in her turn, must 
triumph. " I would to God," cried the apostle, 
" that not only thou, O King Agrippa, but also all 
that hear me this day, were both almost and alto- 
gether such as I am, except these bonds !" Here 
again, in the place of Paul, put the abettor of a 
lying system — a Theudas, a Judas of Galilee ; in 
the place of St. Paul, put an infidel of our own 
time, who is seeking to spread his despairing 
doctrines, and his improbable doubts ; — for one 
moment grant them a triumph like that of the 
apostle ; you will see with what self-complacency 
they will admire their own victory ; with what 
skill they will enhance the difficulties and the 
worth of it ; with what hypocritical humility they 
will render homage to the power of truth, while 
silently they render it to the power of their own 
eloquence ; with what a presumptuous smile they 
will extend a brotherly hand to the new convert, 
and say " I was sure I should convince you!" 
But in what did St. Paul pride himself, since 
there was nothing which he had not received 1 



216 PAUL BEFORE FESTUS AND AGRIPPA. 

He knows the light which for a moment shone 
around King Agrippa is the same which shone 
upon the road to Damascus ; — he knows that the 
voice which for a moment is heard by Agrippa is 
the same which he heard when he was persecut- 
ing the church. He humbly gives to God the 
glory which has just been granted to him ; prays 
to Him to finish in the heart of the monarch the 
work which is begun ; prays Him to render him, 
and all who surround him, partakers in the house- 
hold of grace. But the eyes of the apostle fall 
upon his chains, and he asks of God to make 
them Christians, but not, like him, unfortunate and 
persecuted Christians. 

And Festus, — what is he to think at hearing 
the confession which Agrippa cannot restrain? 
Can his religion of lies and errors give him a 
memory which can compare with what has just 
passed under his eyes ? In the temples of his 
idols, at the foot of his altars, where everything 
speaks to the senses, and nothing to the heart, 
has he ever been present at a scene so impress- 
ive; and can the annals of paganism, in its 
most flourishing ages, point to any priest of its 
false gods, which, with all his partiality, he can 



PAUL BEFORE FESTUS AND AGRIPPA. 217 

compare to this Paul, so calm in danger, so re- 
signed in misfortune, so eloquent in defence of 
himself, and so modest in victory ? Ignorant 
both of the laws of Moses and of Christ, Festus 
saw here only some disputes concerning what 
was called the superstition of the Jews ; he knew, 
probably, that this Paul had been the disciple 
of the celebrated Gamaliel, and supposing that 
study had too much excited an ardent imagina- 
tion, he interrupted the apostle in his defence. 
" Paul," said he, " much learning doth make thee 
mad." But Paul appeals to the king, who sits by 
the side of Festus ; and Festus hears the monarch 
hold to Paul a different language from his own, 
and render him an involuntary homage before the 
astonished crowd. Who, then, is this accused, 
who thus confounds his judge ? Who is this, 
minister of a persecuted worship, who persuades 
with so much power the disciples of a hostile 
faith ? Who is this disciple of a crucified master, 
who speaks with so much courage and fidelity of 
the master whom he has chosen ? Never man 
spake like this man ! And what shall I say to 
the emperor of this remarkable captive ? Will 
it be the same at Rome as at Cesarea, — before 
19 



218 PAUL BEFORE FESTUS AND AGRIPPA. 

Csesar as before Agrippa ? Behold the man 
whom I have allowed to languish in a prison ; 
behold the man whom I was about to deliver up 
to the hatred of his enemies ; and it is by my 
command that he is bound with these chains — 
the very chains which he did not wish to see upon 
his persecutors ! 

To finish the picture, after having gazed upon 
Paul and Festus, let us return to Agrippa. The 
study of the human heart teaches us, that when, 
by an emotion which he cannot repress, a man 
for a moment is drawn out of himself, he imme- 
diately falls back ; drawn out of his natural 
sphere, he returns to it ; raised above his accus- 
tomed sphere, he falls down into it, and then is 
besieged and tormented by a thousand different 
thoughts. Thus a wave, driven from its own bed, 
seeks its level, and is still agitated after having 
found it. What passes in the soul of Agrippa, 
cold as it now is after a momentary heat? He 
did not come to Cesarea to see St. Paul, but 
to perform the vain formality of a pompous 
congratulation to the new governor. Several 
days had passed by before Festus had pro- 
nounced before him the name of Paul. Agrippa 



PAUL BEFORE FESTUS AND AGRIPPA. 219 

expresses a desire to see the man who has so 
many admirers, and so many enemies. It is 
easy to satisfy this desire ; Festus can gather 
new information from this novel interview. Be- 
sides, it will be a pretext for an assembly, an 
hour's amusement, one more resource to occu- 
py a few moments of the proud idleness of a 
sovereign on his travels. Agrippa has seen him, 
this man whom he wished to see as Herod wished 
to see Jesus ; he has seen the man whom he 
expected to meet merely with curious attention 
and answers of indifference. But this man ob- 
tained a different answer ; his irresistible voice 
penetrated to the bottom of Agrippa' s heart, and 
drew from him that confession which struck with 
astonishment Berenice and Festus, and the whole 
assembly, excepting the apostle, who knew that 
he was speaking in the name of his God. Un- 
doubtedly, after the strong and unexpected im- 
pression which the defence of St. Paul produced, 
after the cry of sympathy which he could not 
restrain, Agrippa will have this interesting dis- 
course repeated ; he will listen in deep reflection 
to this new doctrine ; he will compare it with 
those prophets whose writings he knows and 



220 PAUL BEFORE FESTUS AND AGRIPPA. 

believes, and to which St. Paul appeals ; he will 
meditate upon this religion, whose apostles are 
so eloquent, its martyrs so resigned, its confessors 
so bold ; soon the pious wish of St. Paul will be 
in part accomplished ; the church will number one 
more Christian, and Jesus one more servant. 

Who could have foretold it ? From all which 
he has just , heard, Agrippa merely draws with 
Festus the conclusion, " This man might be set 
at liberty, if he had not appealed unto Csesar." 
This is all which remained in his heart ! Com- 
pare for a moment this strong exclamation, " Al- 
most thou persuadest me to be a Christian," with 
these cold words, " This man might have been set 
at liberty, if he had not appealed unto Caesar." 
Inconceivable fickleness of the human heart ! 
With the same inconstancy as the rapid wave 
opens and closes again, is the human heart now 
open, now closed, to the sentiments of pity and of 
duty. Agrippa replying to Paul is a man in all 
the heat of a passionate emotion ; in all the ele- 
vation of sincere enthusiasm; capable at this 
short moment of the grandest things ; counting 
as nothing the futile considerations of interest 
and vanity ; without delay and timid restriction ; 



PAUL BEFORE FESTUS AND AGRIPPA. 221 

full of strength and courage, because he is tempted 
to do good ; devoted to you for the moment, be- 
cause his heart understands your heart. Agrippa 
conferring with Festus is the same man, fallen 
from the height which he had ascended back to 
his accustomed apathy ; hemmed in by his every- 
day trifles ; bound in the narrow circle where he 
turns round and round ; never advancing ; knowing 

i 

none but little views and little motives, and only 
finding in himself a strength in proportion to his 
limited projects; without energy, because he meas- 
ures his means instead of trying them ; beneath 
elevated sentiments, because he calculates instead 
of feeling ; a rebel to generous emotions, because 
he examines instead of admiring. Ah ! when the 
tenderest fibre of the heart has vibrated, when 
man finds himself for an instant animated with 
life and power, why should his weakness so soon 
return ? Before his short energy is exhausted, 
can he not profit by it to stifle a sin, to spring 
forward to virtue, to deliver himself up without 
reserve to the great ideas of religion, to fly from 
time and earth, to seek immortality and heaven, 
to raise himself at one leap to the throne of God, 
to find it? Agrippa! Agrippa! whence came this 
19* 



222 PAUL BEFORE FESTUS AND AGRIPPA. 

mortal inertia, after so healthy an emotion? Why 
did you not wholly open your soul to your God 
who addressed you? — sustain your spirit at the 
height which it had reached? — mount to the eter- 
nal throne? Your Saviour, your God, awaits you 
and is ready to receive you ; and you will say to 
him as St. Paul said, " Lord, what wilt thou have 
me to do?" 



HYMN FOR THE BUILDING OF A COTTAGE. 



BY AUBREY DE VERE. 
I. 

Lay foundations deep and strong, 

On the rock, and not the sand ; — 
Morn her sacred beam has flung 

O'er our ancient land. 
And the children, through the heather, 

Beaming joy from frank bright eyes, 
Dance along, and sing together 

Their loud ecstasies. 
Children, hallowed song to-day ! 
Sing aloud ; but, singing, pray. 
Orphic measures, proudly swelling, 

Lifted cities in old time : 
Build we now an humbler dwelling 

With an humbler rhyme ! 
Unless God the work sustain, 
Our toils are vain ; and worse than vain. 
Better to roam for aye, than rest 
Under the impious shadow of a roof unblest. 



224 HYMN FOR THE BUILDING OF A COTTAGE. 

II. 

Mix the mortar o'er and o'er, 

Holy music singing : 
Holy water o'er it pour, 

Flowers and tresses flinging ! 
Bless we now the earthen floor : — 

May good angels love it ! 
Bless we now the new-raised door, 

And that cell above it ! 
Holy cell, and holy shrine 
For the Maid and Child divine ! 
Remember thou that seest her bending 

O'er that babe upon her knee, 
All Heaven is ever thus extending 

Its arms of love round thee. 
Such thought thy step make light and gay 
As yon elastic linden spray 
On the smooth air nimbly dancing — 
Thy spirits like the dew, glittering thereon and 
glancing. 

in. 

Castles stern, in pride o'er-gazing 
Subject leagues of wolds and woods ; 

Palace fronts, their fretwork raising 
'Mid luxurious solitudes ! 



HYMN FOR THE BUILDING OF A COTTAGE. 225 

These, through clouds their heads uplifting, 

The lightning wrath of heaven invoke : 
His balance power is ever shifting — 

The reed outlasts the oak. 
Live, thou cottage ! live and flourish, 
Like a bank which mild dews nourish, 
Bright with field-flowers self-renewing, 

Annual violets, dateless clover — 
Eyes of flesh thy beauty viewing 

With a glance may pass it over ; 
But to eyes that wiser are 
Thou glitterest like the morning star ! 
O'er every heart thy beauty breathes 
Such sweets as morn shall waft from those new- 
planted wreaths ! 

IV. 

Our toils — not toils — are all but ended ; 

The day has wandered by ; 
Her silver gleams the moon hath blended 

With the azure of the sky : 
Yet still the sunset lights are ranging 

On from mossy stem to stem ; 
Low winds, their odors vague exchanging, 

Chaunt day's requiem. 



226 HYMN FOR THE BUILDING OF A COTTAGE. 

Upon the diamonded panes 

The crimson falls with fainter stains. 

More high in heavenward aspiration 

The gables shoot their mystic lines ; 
While now, supreme in grace as station, 

The tower-like chimney shines. 
Beneath that tower an altar lies. 
Bring wood : — light up the sacrifice ! 
Now westward point the arched porch — 
Crown with a Cross the whole — our cot become 
a Church ! 

v. 

Strike, once more, a livelier measure, 

Circling those fair walls again : 
Songs of triumph, songs of pleasure, 

Well become you, gladsome train ! 
Mark that shadowy roof; each angle 

Angel heads and wings support : 
Those the woodbine soon must tangle, 

These the rose shall court ; 
And mingling closer, hour by hour, 
Enclose ere long a Sabbath bower — 
There shall the Father oft at even 

Entone some ancient hymn or story, 
Till earth once more grows bright as heaven, 

With days of long past glory, 



HYMN FOR THE BUILDING OF A COTTAGE. 227 

When Truth and Honor ranged abroad, 
To cleanse the world from Force and Fraud : 
When Zeal was humbled ; Hope was strong ; 
And Virtue moved alone, the angelic scourge of 
Wrong ! 

VI. 

O happy days ! exhaustless dower 

Of gentle joys, and hours well spent, 
Renewed while moons their radiance shower 

Upon the Acacia's silver tent ; 
Or airs of balmiest mornings thrill, 

And swell with renovated play, 
The breasts of children, childish still, 

And innocent alway ! 
O'er them light flit our woes and jars, 
As shades o'er lilies, clouds o'er stars — 
Even now my fancy hears the cooing 

Of doves from well-known perch or croft ; 
The bees even now the flowers are wooing 

With sleepy murmur soft. 
Glad home, from menial service pure ! 
Thee shall no foreign wants obscure : 
Here all the ties are sacred ties, 
And Love shines clear through all, and Truth 
asks no disguise. 



228 HYMN FOR THE BUILDING OF A COTTAGE. 

VII. 

Kings of the earth ! too frail, too small, 

This humble tenement for you ? 
Then lo ! from heaven my song shall call 

A statelier retinue ! 
They come, the twilight ether cheering, 
(Not vain the suppliant song, not vain,) 
Our earth on golden platform nearing ; 

On us their crowns they rain ! 
Like Gods they stand ; the portal 
Lighting with looks immortal ! 
Faith, on her chalice gazing deep ; 

And Justice, with uplifted scale ; 
Meek Reverence ; pure, undreaming Sleep ; 

Valor, in diamond mail ! 
There Hope, with vernal wreath ; hard by, 
Indulgent Love ; keen Purity ; 
And Truth, with radiant forehead bare ; 
And Mirth, whose ringing laughter triumphs o'er 
Despair. 

VIII. 

Breathe low — stand mute in reverent trance! 

Those potentates their mighty eyes 
Have fixed : right well that piercing glance 

Roof, wall, and basement tries ! 



HYMN FOR THE BUILDING OF A COTTAGE. 229 

Foundations few that gaze can meet — 

Therefore the Virtues stay with few : 
But where they once have fixed their seat, 

Her home Heaven fixes too ! 
They enter now, with awful grace, 
Their acceptable dwelling-place. 
In tones majestical, yet tender, 

They chaunt their consecration hymn ; 
From jewelled breasts a sacred splendor 

Heaving through shadows dim. 
The rite is done : the seed is sown : 
Leave, each his offering, and be gone ! 
Stay, ye for whom were raised these walls, — 
Possession God hath ta'en : and now his guests 
he calls. 
20 



THE VILLAGE CHURCH. 



BY ROBERT NICOLL. 

God's lowly temple ! place of many prayers ! 

Gray is thy roof, and crumbling are thy walls ; 

And over old green graves thy shadow falls, 
To bless the spot where end all human cares ! 

The sight of thee brings gladness to my heart ; 
And while beneath thy humble roof I stand, 
I seem to grasp an old familiar hand, 

And hear a voice that bids my spirit start. 

Long years ago, in childhood's careless hour, 
Thou wast to me e'en like a grandsire's knee — 
From storms a shelter thou wast made to be — 

I bound my brow with ivy from thy tower. 

The humble-hearted, and the meek and pure, 
Have, by the holy worship of long years, 
Made thee a hallowed place ; and many tears 

Shed in repentance deep have blessed thy floor. 



THE VILLAGE CHURCH. 



231 



Like some all-loving good man's feeling heart, 
Thy portal hath been opened unto all. 
A treasure-house, where men, or great or small, 

May bring their purest, holiest thoughts, thou art ! 

Church of the village ! God doth not despise 
The torrent's voice in mountain valleys dim, 
Nor yet the blackbird's summer morning hymn; 

And He will hear the prayers from thee that rise. 

The father loves thee, — for his son is laid 

Among thy graves ; the mother loves thee too, 
For 'neath thy roof, by love time-tried and true, 

Her quiet heart long since was happy made. 

The wanderer in a far and foreign land, 

When death's last sickness o'er him revels* free, 
Turns his heart homewards ever unto thee, 

And those who, weekly, 'neath thy roof-tree stand. 

Lowly thou art ; but yet, when time is set, 

Will He who loves what wicked men despise — 
Who hears the orphan's voice, that up doth rise 

In deep sincerity — not thee forget ! 



232 



THE VILLAGE CHURCH. 



Lone temple ! did men know it — unto thee 

Would pilgrims come, more than to battle 
plains ; 

For thou hast lightened human woes and pains, 
And taught men's souls the truth that makes them 
free ! 

The distant sound of thy sweet Sabbath bell 
O'er meadows green no more shall come to me, 
Sitting beneath the lonely forest tree ; — 

Church of my native village ! fare thee well ! 



SILENT WORSHIP. 

A FRIENDS' MEETING. 

I had been to a Friends' meeting before. But 
that was when I knew that a distinguished Eng- 
lish Friend would be present. I went with a 
crowd of others, who went to hear him. We 
knew he would speak, or thought we kjiew it, 
because the streets were placarded with announce- 
ments that he would be there. And we heard 
him. 

But this day — my only Sunday in Philadelphia 
for a long time — I wanted to go to a real, usual 
Friends' meeting. And therefore we had gone 
without especial expectation to hear any one. I 
wish everybody could go to meeting, always, as 
free from that sort of association. Here, at least, 
the Friends have the better of the rest of us 
Protestants. 

It was a beautiful Sunday, — most beautiful in 
May; — and, in beautiful Philadelphia, "May" 
means May. Fortunately enough, we were very 
early at the meeting, so that the doors were not 
20* 



234 



A friends' meeting. 



opened ; and we walked once and again, as we 
waited for the service, around Franklin-square ; 
the fountain in which was flashing in the sun, the 
grass and foliage green and fresh and bright as 
fairy land ; and the crowds of people, men, wo- 
men, and children, as cheerful, though as quiet, as 
Sunday. 

And thence we walked on, and arrived a second 
time at the meeting-house, together with others, 
so that }he gradual gathering showed that this was 
the right hour. One after another the Friends 
came in, almost all stopping in the outer square, to 
bid each other good-day, and to drink a little 
of that sparkling water from the can which is 
chained there. As I sit I can see the little boys 
drag their fathers aside to the hydrant, if they 
pass it without this draught ; and then each sips a 
little, so that one would half fancy it were a pre- 
paratory rite ; — the boys whisper a little, while 
their fathers say " good-day" to each other, and 
then all walk into the house together. Is it fancy 
or not, that they come in with a more natural, 
unaffected air than worshippers into temples of 
more pretension ? Is there a sort of formal pace 
for our carpeted aisles, — as if the organ volun- 



A friends' meeting. 



235 



tary, like a military tune, demanded a movement 
of its own? I hardly know. Perhaps I never 
before looked thus at the different people scatter- 
ing into church. I cannot help watching them 
here. Indeed I do not care to help it. These 
people all come in, reverentially, indeed, — but not 
more reverentially than they walk the streets 
every day. At least, there is no sombre look on 
their faces. 

Every one is in. — No! there is one of the 
world's people creaking in at the end door. How 
can he make that noise in the midst of this 
silence ? Why could he not come in time 1 But 

now he is seated, — and the silence No ! — 

there is another, and another. But they sit near- 
er the door ; I am glad of that. I hope nobody 
will come in now. This silence, — real silence, — 
while one has the perfect consciousness of com- 
munion, is refreshing, truly. I remember how 
utterly a lonely silence always impresses me. 
This is like it, — but I had rather be here than 
there. I sat in one of the long halls in the cave 
of Schoharie. C. and the rest of them had gone 
by, and I had only my lamp for company. They 
were quarter of a mile in advance, — and the 



236 



A friends' meeting. 



world quarter of a mile above me, and nothing 
but thick rock between. I remember the instant 
when I put out my lamp, that I might be quite 
alone. I was never less alone; — a familiar thing 
to say, — often said, — but how wonderfully felt 
when one feels God with him, in the fearless- 
ness, the trust, the excited enthusiasm, of one of 
those cave or mountain solitudes ! Great God ! 
whose lessons, whose hand-writing, whose voices, 
are like those of Thine ? 

What is that bird ? Oh ! I am in the Friends' 
meeting! How they sing, — those cheerful little 
fellows on those branches which will swing to and 
fro across the open door-way ! One, two, — and 
then a third strikes in, to show that he can sing 
as well. They understand Sunday wonderfully 
well. Or, better, I suppose, they keep Sunday 
every day. There is no inconsistency between 
their Sunday and their week-day lives. Sing 
away, little fellows ; there are no better masses 
than those, to-day, all round the world ! As the 
world turns to-day, there is sounding something 
better than a perpetual morning drum-beat. To- 
day, as land after land flashes into the sun, there 
is a perpetual morning prayer going up to God, 



A friends' meeting. 



237 



from that church which he sees as one, though 
we subdivide it so. And every day, as the lands 
turn to meet the sun, there is poured upwards 
this chorus of praise, which does not know, per- 
haps, that it is praise, — and yet is perpetual — 
has been, ever since Adam was. An eternal 
hymn, of bird and beast, going up to the God of 
life ! Great God ! — how beautiful this world is ! 
Sound and sight always delighted, — never bewil- 
dered. Spring crowded with wonders, which we 
say we never felt before ; — nay, which we never 
did feel before. For, thank God! if one power of 
our nature does grow as we grow older, it is this 
wdth which we so enjoy nature. Was ever any- 
thing before so beautiful to me as the trees in 
Franklin-square to-day ! and that rich grass ! and 
the willows hanging over the basin — green foun- 
tains as they seemed! — and the bright sparkles of 
the other fountain, — that delicate spray ! — and 
the beautiful rainbow, when we walked round so 
as to catch the right light of the sun ! Certainly, 
I never enjoyed anything in the world more. 
Why, the very May-flower hunt, of last Tuesday, 
in Massachusetts, has made me enjoy Franklin- 
square to-day ! Thank God that we do gain so, 



238 



A friends' meeting. 



— that every spring, every walk, teaches Ster- 
ling's lesson of the night : — 

" As night is darkening o'er, 

And stars resume their tranquil day, 

They show how nature gives us more 
Than all it ever takes away!" 

Why, there is the dancing shadow of the branch 
on the wall yonder ! Never, till this moment, 
have I noticed such easy gracefulness of move- 
ment in a shadow. It is on one side of the door- 
way. I do not see the branch itself. 

But here, of course, I must not move. I had 
forgotten I was in meeting. Nobody has spoken 
yet. I do not wonder. Why should they speak ? 
* * # # How simply arranged every- 
thing here is ! They carry their simplicity too 
far. Because they would be simple, their house 
need not be ugly. That window would have 
answered the same purpose if it had been of 
agreeable proportions. How the eye seeks for 
something graceful, — nay, must have it ! That 
is the reason that mine, so unconsciously, has 
been resting on that cord with which they pull up 
the curtain. They forgot to stretch that tight 



A friends' meeting. 



239 



when they arranged the room. And so, of itself, 
as we blasphemously say, it has fallen into that 
graceful curve. It is the only graceful thing on 
that side on which I am looking, inside the build- 
ing. It is the only thing which men have let 
alone. Curiously graceful that catenary curve in 
which it hangs ! You cannot draw one by your 
eye. Not the truest artist ! And yet, the world 
over, there is not a loose cord but is hanging in 
that delicately graceful way. Why, even those 
that they stretch the tightest — - that they say are 
perfectly tight — really bend a little, a very little, 
and in this exquisite curve. The world over, they 
are obeying the same law. And because it is 
God's law, that form, in which they fall obedient, 
pleases my eye, — pleases every one who looks on 
it. The same here, there, and everywhere ; — 
the same arrangement that makes Leverrier's 
planet sweep around in an orbit of such consum- 
mate grace ; the same makes the trough of the 
waves of such sweep as it is ; the cordage of a 
ship so beautiful; — yes, and that law has been 
strong enough to defeat this mistake of my 
Friends, — (they are Friends, though I never 
saw one of them) — here in their meeting-house. 



240 



A friends' meeting. 



Strong enough for that ! Why, yes, I remem- 
ber, that men prove by the calculus, — by its 
highest flight and best, — which is, as always in 
the mathematics, the highest and best flight of 
poetry, — I remember, that by the most elaborate 
and recondite of calculation, they prove, that in 
fact no human power, no finite power, can strain 
a cord that it shall be absolutely straight ; that 
it shall not have something of this beautiful God- 
ordered curve. The highest power of man, his 
best calculation, shows, like his weakest and his 
poorest, that God has ruled all things in beauty, 
and that all man's twitchings and struggles are 
powerless, when they act against this eternal 
Law. God of order ! God of beauty ! how can 
we thank thee for such daily miracles ? How 
can we learn — grow — to prize as we ought 
life and its wonders ? Strengthen us, Father ! 
strengthen us ! that our free lives, also, may ac- 
cord better and more often with Thy Eternal 
Life: — that we may labor with Thy laws, with 
Thy power, — Thou in us, and we in Thee. 

Some one spoke ! No ; it was the moving door 
which startled me. I hope it will not swing to. 



a friends' meeting. 241 

I must see still that shadow of the branch flitting 
to and fro on the outer wall there. What a hand- 
writing it is ! So graceful ! and with every new 
motion so different from that before ! beautiful, 
and infinite, like all the rest ! Must these inner 
walls around us be left so bare, and coldly white, 
and unornamented ? Surely we should not be 
made more worldly if the memory of God's love 
came to us from the inner as well as that outer 
wall of this house. And could it make us more 
worldly to see Him in the pure works of brave 
men, made strong by His strength, than it does to 
see Him in the shadow there, — or the leaf, or the 
bough? If that dead white wall which is opposite 
me, beneath the little windows, and above the 
elders' seats, bore some representation of one of 
the victories of God when He works in the soul of 
man ? Suppose it were of the very beginning of 
this gathering which is here to-day? The first 
day that William Penn, a gentlemanly, courtly, 
spirited young fellow, went with his college com- 
panions to hear Thomas Loe, the Quaker itiner- 
ant, as they called him, preach in Oxford — what 
a day that was for this Pennsylvania — for us here 
— nay, for the whole world ! I can figure them out 
21 



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A friends' meeting. 



for myself on the large blank wall : — Loe preach- 
ing that which he remembered these college sprigs 
of nobility and gentility needed. Plainly dressed 
he, but nobly moved ; feeling that the spirit is on 
him, I can see his face, as it would lighten up, 
as he spoke to that crowd around him of wonder- 
ing citizens, growing more and more cordial to 
him, and to that group of students, who have gone 
there to laugh, to ridicule — or, in one word, to 
" see fun." Why, on the picture, even their faces 
should be growing grave, beneath his solemn 
Spirited, Gospel eloquence ! And what ought to 
be the face of Penn ? At this moment he is re- 
ceiving the influence which shall last through his 
life — the preacher is fanning into a flame the 
sparks which have always been in his heart ; and 
those words, that spirit of that man, is mastering 
him ; is compelling him to listen ; is compelling 
him to obey ; and, from this moment forward, he 
will be the true-hearted, God-seeking friend of 
man ! It is a moment to study expression. As he 
leans on John Locke's shoulder there, — as he 
listens with more ardor and more, — his face must 
lighten with the most intense light. It is fervent 
devotion, resting on grave thought. Penn, ardent 



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243 



and moved, resting on Locke — thoughtful, but 
perhaps no less touched in his own way. What a 
pair these, — to stand among those flaunting laugh- 
ers, gay dressed and half listless, and those sober, 
undemonstrative citizens, in their simpler aspect, 
— to be listening to such a preacher as Thomas 
Loe ! What a triumph of the true sincere spirit 
of Loe, if he could have only known what should 
come from that moment! Penn did stand by his 
death-bed, I remember, a few years after, and the 
dying saint knew then that here was a young man 
all ready to go forward in his own work. But he 
could not know that that young man should be 
the beginning of a nation ; the visible symbol to 
all time of the uselessness of war — whose name 
should be synonymous with peace ; and he did 
not know — who does know? — how far that day's 
preaching rested on Locke's conscience, and 
made him the true man he was. Unconscious 
genius ! how brave is this working in faith when 
there is no sight! — this preaching to those who 
seem scoffers, perhaps, — who are the regenera- 
tors of the world! It is God's work again. Faith, 
noble faith, — so much more noble than knowl- 
edge — like all things noble, it leads us up to Him 



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of whom it tells us ! Father ! let it do more ; as 
it brings us up to Thee, let it inspirit us also, and 
make us also alive, that, though we see nothing 
of the harvest, we may still forever sow the seed; 
— that, though the heaviest thunders are above 
us, and the blackest clouds and the darkest day, 
we may still scatter it on the field ; and do Thou, 
by the lightning itself, and by these very storms 
which overwhelm us, give it life and strength ; 
that, though long after we have left our work, it 
shall still spring up, and yield abundantly ! 

But there is no picture ! The wall is only 
white. I wish there were! I wish George Wall, 
the duaker painter, would paint one there. I 
should be glad to be reminded oftener of these 
brave men, God's true children ; and, by their 
deeds, of their Father. What picture could we 
have on the other side — the woman's side? 
There is a blank wall also. It matches this : — 
there should be a woman's picture, too : one of 
woman's Christian victories. Such resolution as 
they have, in all their weakness ! Such wisdom 
as they have, coming straight from their unlogi- 
cal simplicity ! Such power as they have, from 



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245 



their mere quiet truth, unconcealing, unconcealed ! 
Ready, if they think there is need — ready as the 
stoutest man — to go even to the scourge or to 
the stake ! Poor Jane of Arc ! Her only fault 
that she loved her country and her countrymen 
too well, and acted out her love in the crude lan- 
guage her time had; — in that brutal outer fighting, 
the only way she knew of; — as brave as the bravest 
of them ; — and stronger and more hopeful than 
the strongest of them, because she trusted in the 
Eternal Truth, in Eternal Righteousness — trusted 
in God ! You almost say that it jiever happened 
in fact ; — that the picture of her would be only a 
type of what is always true. Faith like hers 
should be mounted on the charger of victory ; yes, 
and it should be clothed with that helmet and 
breast-plate, that heavenly armor, of which Paul 
tells. How natural to represent that Spirit in her 
form, — and around her the group of soldiers, 

wondering, fearing 

I forget myself. Jane of Orleans must not be 
in a Friends' meeting-house. Some one else 
must be painted on that panel. Mrs. Fry, per- 
haps, in a prison? Or some Quaker mother here 
among the Indians? Or some of the sufferers 
21* 



246 



A friends' meeting. 



among the English, or New English ? — the mar- 
tyrdom of a later saint? No, not that; — we will 
not preserve the memory of the persecutions. 
That shall die, as other old forms die, and old lan- 
guages, when men have done with them. But the 
true spirit of all these, — that must be preserved. 
That spirit of perpetual confidence— unshrinking 
faith in the secret conscience call of God — that is 
immortal. The picture shall show that ! It was 
in all of them, just as it was in the young steel- 
armed French maiden. I can see her, I can 
almost hear her, with its supernatural eloquence, 
exciting starved and fearful soldiers. Or, in that 
little minute, when men's awe of death leaves 
even a convict wholly free, just before he dies, to 
speak all he will, — I can see her, as she stands 
chained at the stake ; her face alive with more 
than earthly life ; her eyes flashing with heavenly 
fire, and yet soft with heavenly love, as she 
speaks her last words to those dull persecutors ! 

But I forget myself again. A warrior, a wo- 
man of the sword, must not be in a Friends' 
meeting-house. No. But who shall be ? Not 
Judith, — not Deborah, — not the Queen of Sheba. 
She was coldly intellectual ; — no ! it shall be a 



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247 



Christian woman, who gives life to the scene with 
Christian faith, with Christian endurance, and 
Christian power. It shall be one of the martyrs 
among: women who have consecrated the church 
which has so often made saints of them; who have 
carried forward, so often and so far, the gospel, 
which spoke to the first of them so truly, though 
they were in anguish, in a woman's tears, — and 
suffering with all a woman's sympathy, when he 
looked down upon them from the cross. They 
also have been apostles, though unnamed ; they 
also have been preachers, whether they spoke 
aloud or not ; they also have been Christian sol- 
diers, whether they have girt on armor or not. 
The heroine of France, in rallying the soldiers, is 
only an outward exhibition of what so many of 
them have been before. We see her do — what so 
many of them have done, unseen — lead on thou- 
sands by the word of faith. We hear her say — 
what so many, of them have said, unheard — that 
the call of God makes the weakest powerful. 
We see her suffer — as so many of them have suf- 
fered, unheralded — a true, brave woman; — true 
to the last, and brave in the midst of torture. 
I will think of Jane of Arc ! I will draw out 



248 



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her picture there on the wall, as I look at it. 
This is not a vague wandering of thought that 
brings me back to her ; and she and her suffer- 
ings are not unfit associates of the place. For 
one does not think of the righting ; it is not of that 
sad bloodshed that I am reminded. Their mem- 
ory has gone ; it is lost to me as is the old dialect 
in which she spoke ; or the fashion, indeed, of any 
of the outward dresses which she wore ; of any of 
the outward seemings through which her spirit 
spoke. God be praised for that ! God be praised 
that the bitter form of fighting and bloodshed does 
seem old, and gone ! that these Friends here have 
helped to push it away — to bury it in rust ! But 
the Spirit which spoke through it — the trust in 
God, the consciousness of God's inner voice, 
which enlivened it, — will never die. That is im- 
mortal ! And it is the one Spirit which enlivened 
all those other martyrs. God be praised for that! 
God indeed be praised ! I thank Thee, Father, 
for this also, — that in all the past which is gone, as 
in this present, Thou art unchanging, unchanged ; 
that as time passes by, God's spirit does not pass 
by, but is Right Eternal, Truth Immortal ! Do 
Thou, the Eternal God — the unchangeable I Am 



A friends' meeting. 



249 



— enter my heart with all the power of Thy pres- 
ence, that in me the right and the truth may not 
falter, may not yield ; — make me to be Thine for- 
ever ! 

Hark ! some one speaks. It is one of the 
elders beneath the narrow windows. " ■ They who 
wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength/ 
They who wait upon the Lord shall renew their 
strength. I am glad, my friends, that there is still 
a company of those who are willing to wait upon 
the Lord, although in silence, knowing that He 
will renew their strength. I am glad, that in this 
time, when there are so many voices, and so many 
men who oppose Him and His people, there is still 
a company of those who are willing to meet, as 
their fathers did, and wait for the influence of His 
Spirit. When all philosophy tells us that even 
of dead matter there is no end, — that its atoms 
separate but to unite in other forms, and never 
perish, — how can it be that the spirit, which gives 
all its life to matter, shall end, or be of no worth 
or of no account ? And how can we forget to 
seek the Eternal Spirit, the Spirit of Spirits? — 
to wait for it in prayer, and in communion, that 
it may inspirit our lives ? " 



250 



A friends' meeting. 



How can we, indeed? — how can we ? I hope 
he will say nothing more ! No ! he has sat down. 
How can we go through the world as if it were 
a dead world, a giant corpse, and talk of dead 
philosophies as if we were dissecting it, and study- 
ing the anatomy of it, as it would be if there were 
no Spirit to give order and law ? How can we 
do this, and talk of this, and think of this, for- 
ever ? And that God is so near us, — speaking 
to us, if we will only hear ; calling us, if we will 
only listen ; His spirit knocking, if we will only 
receive it ; every pulse, every fibre, of this corpse, 
as I called it, alive ; and alive because it is His 
will ! God of life ! now, at least, I do remember 
Thee ; now, at least, I do seek Thee ! Oh, seek 
me, Father, when I am dead, or sleeping ! seek 
me in the living voices of truth and love, that I 
may wake again, and live again, in Christ's life 
— in Thy life — in the life which Thy goodness has 
made eternal ! 

There is a woman speaking ! " They that wait 
upon the Lord shall renew their strength ; they 
shall mount up with wings of eagles ; they shall 
run, and not be weary ; they shall walk, and not 
faint." She says nothing more. But what an 



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251 



answer is here to prayer ! Before it is offered, 
before it has conceived itself, God has promised 
thus to hear it and to bless it. God finds us thus 
the moment that we seek Him. He is with us 
when we try to be with Him. 

O God ! direct my wandering thought 

To centre upon Thee ; 
Direct my eyes to look through aught, 

Till Thee, their God, they see ! 

In every leaf of every tree, 

In all the world around, 
My wandering eye has looked, — till Thee, 

The God of Love, it found. 

In every work where labors man, 

With true or selfish mood, 
My wandering thought finds God sustain, 

And crown each toil for good ; 
My wandering thought finds all in vain 

The toil which turns from God. 

Praise God, for wandering eyes his world of love 
to see ! 

Praise God, for thought which wanders always 
free ! 



252 



A friends' meeting. 



Praise God, for faith, which bends a willing knee, 
Draws me to Him, the while He smiles on me. 

Ah ! One of the elders is standing up ! See ! 
he shakes hands with another. And there, those 
others are shaking hands. They are beginning 
to go away. The meeting is done. 



HOLY PLACES AND THINGS. 



BY REV. JOHN KEBLE. 
I. 

PRAYER AT HOME AND IN CHURCH. 

" These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the 
women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren." 

Where are the homes of paschal mirth, 
The bowers where heavenly Joy may rest her 
wings on earth, 
And at her leisure gaze adoring 
Where out of sight the golden clouds are soaring 
Beneath the ascending Saviour's feet ? 
Where may rejoicing Love retreat 
To frame a melody for His returning meet ? 

Two homes we know of Love's resort, 
One in the upper room, one in the Temple court : 
In glorious Sion both, possessing 
Alike her presence whom the awful blessing 
Lifted above all Adam's race : — 
The royal Twelve are there in place ; 
Women and duteous friends, awaiting His high 
grace. 
22 



254 



HOLY PLACES AND THINGS. 



Two Homes for us His Love hath found, 
One by our quiet couch, and one in holy ground. 
There in due season meekly kneeling, 
Learn we our lesson ere His last revealing. 
The Mother of our Lord is there, 
And Saints are breathing hallowed air, 
Living and dead, to waft on high our feeble 
prayer. 

And with His Mother and His Saints 
He watches by, who loves the prayer that never 
faints. * 

Avaunt, ill thoughts, and thoughts of folly ! 
Where christened infants sport, that floor is holy: 
Holier the station where they bow, 
Adoring Him with daily vow, 
Till He with ampler grace their youthful hearts 
endow. 



HOLY PLACES AND THINGS. 



255 



IT. 

PREPARING- FOR SUNDAY SERVICES. 
" As they went to tell His disciples, Jesus met them, saying, ' All hail.' " 

Behold, athwart our woodland nest, 

And down our misty vale, 
From his own bright and quiet rest 
The Sunday sun looks out, and seems to say, " All 
hail." 

True token of that brighter Day, 
Which hailed, this matin hour, 
The holy women on their way. 
They sought His Church in love, He met them in 
His power. 

And dare we the transporting word 

To our own hearts apply ? 
Trembling we dare ; for He had heard 
Our lowly breathed vows, ere flamed yon morning 
sky. 

We have been by His cross and grave ; 

His Angel bade us speed 
Where they resort, whom He will save, 
And hear and say as one, " The Lord is risen 
indeed." 



256 



HOLY PLACES AND THINGS. 



Then speed we on our willing way, • 

And He our way will bless. 
In fear and love thy heart array : 
Straight be thy churchway path, unsoiled thy 
Sabbath dress. 



III. 

WALK TO CHURCH. 

" The path of the Just is as the shining light, which shineth more and more 
unto the perfect day." 

Now the holy hour is nigh, 

Seek we out the holy ground ; 
Overhead the breezy sky, 

Rustling woodlands all around : 
Fragrant steams from oak-leaves sere, 

Peat and moss, and whortles green, 
Dews that yet are glistening clear 

Through their brown or briary screen. 

Hie we through the autumnal wood, 
Pausing where the echoes dwell, 

Boys, or men of boyish mood, 
Trying how afar they swell. 



HOLY PLACES AND THINGS. 



257 



Haply down some opening glade 
Now the old gray tower we see, 

Underneath whose solemn shade 
Jesus risen hath sworn to be. 

He hath sworn, for there will meet 

Two or three in His great name, 
Waiting till their incense sweet 

Feel His heaven-descended flame. 
Day by day that old gray tower 

Tells his tale, and week by week, 
In their tfanquil, hoary bower, 

To the unlearned its shadows speak. 



IV. 

THE EMPTY CHURCH. 
" The blind and the lame came to Him in the temple." 

Why should we grudge the hour and house of 
prayer 

To Christ's own blind and lame, 
Who come to meet Him there ? 
Better, be sure, His altar-flame 
Should glow in one dim, wavering spark, 
Than quite die down, and leave His temple drear 
and dark. 
22* 



258 



HOLY PLACES AND THINGS. 



" But in our Psalm their choral answers fail." — 
Nay, But the heart may speak, 
And to the holy tale 
Respond aright, in silence meek. 
And well we know, bright angel throngs 
Are by, to swell those whisperings into warbled 
songs. 

What if the world our two or three despise? 
They in His name are here, 
To whom, in suppliant guise, 
Of old the blind and lame drew near. 
Beside His royal courts they wait, 
And ask His healing hand : we dare not close the 
gate. 



V. 

THE OFFERTORY. 
" God loveth a' cheerful giver." 

Christ before thy door is waiting ; 
Rouse thee, slave of earthly gold. 

Lo, He comes, thy pomp abating, 
Hungry, thirsty, homeless, cold : — 
Hungry, by whom Saints are fed 
With the Eternal Living Bread ; 



HOLY PLACES AND THINGS. 



Thirsty, from whose pierced side 

Healing waters spring and glide; 
Cold and bare He comes, who never 

May put off His robe of light ; 
Homeless, who must dwell forever 

In the Father's Bosom bright. 

In kind ambush always lying, 
He besets thy bed and path, 

Fain would see thee hourly buying 
Prayers against the time of wrath, — 
Prayers of thankful mourners here, 
Prayers that in Love's might appear 
With the offering of the Blest, 
At the shrine of perfect rest. 

See, His undecaying treasure 
Lies like dew upon the grass, 

To be won and stored at pleasure: — 
But its hour will quickly pass. 

Christ before His altar standing, 
Priest of Priests, in His own day, 

Calls on thee, some fruit demanding 
Of the week's heaven-guarded way. 
See His arm stretched out to bless : 
Whoso nearest to Him press, 



HOLY PLACES AND THINGS. 

Open-handed, eagle-eyed, 

They may best that arm abide, 
When, the last dread lightnings wielding, 

He shall lift it, and decree, 
"Go, ye churls, of soul unyielding, 

Where nor gift nor prayer shall be." 

Jesus in His babes abiding 

Shames our cold, ungentle ways, 
Silently the young heart guiding 

To unconscious love and praise. 

See out-reached the fingers small, 

Ever, at each playful call, 

Ready to dispense around 

Joys and treasures newly found. 
Fearless they of waste or spoiling, 

Nought enjoy but what they share ; 
Grudging thought and care and moiling 

Live not in their pure glad air. 

Strange the law of Love's combining! — 
As with wild winds moaning round 

Tones from lute or harp entwining 
Make one thread of solemn sound ; — 
As calm eve's autumnal glow 
Answer to the woods below ; — 



HOLY PLACES AND THINGS. 



261 



As in landscape, leaf or stone, 

Cloud or flower, at random thrown, 
Helps the sadness or the glory; — 

So the gift of playful child 
May recall thy natal story, 

Church of Salem undented ! 

How the new-born Saints, assembling 
Daily 'neath the shower of fire, 

To their Lord, in hope and trembling, 
Brought the choice of earth's desire. 
Never incense-cloud so sweet 
As before the Apostles' feet 
Rose, majestic Seer, from thee, 
Type of royal hearts and free, 

Son of holiest consolation, 

When thou turn'dst thy land to gold, 

And thy gold to strong salvation, 
Leaving all, by Christ to hold: — 

Type of Priest and Monarch, casting 
All their crowns before the Throne, 

And the treasure everlasting 
Heaping in the world unknown. 
Now in gems their relics lie, 
And their names in blazonry, 



HOLY PLACES AND THINGS. 

And their forms from storied panes 

Gleam athwart their own loved fanes, 
Each his several radiance flinging 

On the sacred altar floor, 
Whether great ones much are bringing, 

Or their mite the mean and poor. 

Bring thine all, thy choicest treasure, 
Heap it high and hide it deep : 

Thou shalt win o'erflowing measure, 
Thou shalt climb where skies are steep. 
For as Heaven's true only light 
Quickens all those forms so bright, 
So where Bounty never faints, 
There the Lord is with His Saints, 

Mercy's sweet contagion spreading 
Far and wide, from heart to heart, 

From His wounds atonement shedding 
On the blessed widow's part. 



A SABBATH IN BOSTON. 



BY O. W. HOLMES. 

"Tv* w w w 

Come, seek the air ; some pictures we may gain, 
Whose passing shadows shall not be in vain ; 
Not from the scenes that crowd the stranger's soil, 
Not from our own amidst the stir of toil, 
But when the Sabbath brings its kind release, 
And care lies slumbering on the lap of peace. 

The air is hushed ; the street is holy ground ; 
Hark ! The sweet bells renew their welcome sound; 
As one by one awakes each silent tongue, 
It tells the turret whence its voice is flung. 

The Chapel, last of sublunary things 
That shocks our echoes with the name of Kings, 
Whose bell, just glistening from the font and forge, 
Rolled its proud requiem for the second George, 
Solemn and swelling, as of old it rang, 
Flings to the wind its deep sonorous clang ; — 
The simpler pile, that, mindful of the hour 
When Howe's artillery shook its half-built tower, 



264 



A SABBATH IN BOSTON. 



Wears on its bosom, as a bride might do, 
The iron breastpin which the " Rebels" threw, 
Wakes the sharp echoes with the quivering thrill 
Of keen vibrations, tremulous and shrill ; — 
Aloft, suspended in the morning's fire, 
Crash the vast cymbals from the Southern spire; — 
The Giant, standing by the elm-clad green, 
His white lance lifted o'er the silent scene, 
Whirling in air his brazen goblet round, 
Swings from its brim the swollen floods of sound; — 
While, sad with memories of the olden time, 
The Northern Minstrel pours her tender chime, 
Faint, single tones, that spell their ancient song, 
But tears still follow as they breathe along. 

Child of the soil, whom fortune sends to range 
Where man and nature, faith and customs, change, 
Borne in thy memory, each remembered tone 
Mourns on the winds that sigh in every zone. 
When Ceylon sweeps thee with her perfumed 
breeze 

Through the warm billows of the Indian seas ; 
When, — ship and shadow blended both in one, — 
Flames o'er thy mast the equatorial sun, 
From sparkling midnight to refulgent noon 
Thy canvass swelling with the still monsoon ; 



A SABBATH IN BOSTON. 



265 



When through thy shrouds the wild tornado sings, 
And thy poor sea-bird folds her tattered wings, 
Oft will delusion o'er thy senses steal, 
And airy echoes ring the Sabbath peal ! 
Then, dim with grateful tears, in long array 
Rise the fair town, the island-studded bay, 
Home, with its smiling board, its cheering fire, 
The half-choked welcome of the expecting sire, 
The mother's kiss, and, still if aught remain, 
Our whispering hearts shall aid the silent strain. — 

Ah, let the dreamer o'er the tafFrail lean, 
To muse unheeded, and to weep unseen ; 
Fear not the tropic's dews, the evening's chills, 
His heart lies warm among his triple hills ! 

Turned from her path by this deceitful gleam, 
My wayward fancy half forgets her theme ; 
See through the streets that slumbered in repose 
The living current of devotion flows ; 
Its varied forms in one harmonious band, 
Age leading childhood by its dimpled hand, 
Want, in the robe whose faded edges fall 
To tell of rags beneath the tartan shawl, 
And wealth, in silks that, fluttering to appear, 
Lift the deep borders of the proud cashmere. 
23 



266 



A SABBATH IN BOSTON. 



See, but glance briefly, sorrow-worn and pale, 
Those sunken cheeks beneath the widow's veil ; 
Alone she wanders where with him she trod, 
No arm to stay her, but she leans on God. 

While other doublets deviate here and there, 
What secret handcuff binds that pretty pair ? 
Compactest couple ! pressing side to side, — 
Ah, the white bonnet that reveals the bride ! 

By the white neckcloth, with its straitened tie, 
The sober hat, the Sabbath-speaking eye, 
Severe and smileless, he that runs may read 
The stern disciple of Geneva's creed ; 
Decent and slow, behold his solemn march ; 
Silent he enters through yon crowded arch. 

A livelier bearing of the outward man, 
The light-hued gloves, the undevout rattan, 
Now smartly raised, or half-profanely twirled, — 
A bright, fresh twinkle from the week-day world, — 
Tell their plain story ; — yes, thine eyes behold 
A cheerful Christian from the liberal fold. 

Down the chill street that curves in gloomiest 
shade, 

What marks betray yon solitary maid ? 

The cheek's red rose, that speaks of balmier air ; 

The Celtic blackness of her braided hair ; 



A SABBATH IN BOSTON. 



267 



The gilded missal in her kerchief tied ; 
Poor Nora, exile from Killarney's side ! 

Sister in toil, though born of colder skies, 
That left their azure in her downcast eyes, 
See pallid Margaret, Labor's patient child, 
Scarce weaned from home, the nursling of the wild 
Where white Katahdin o'er the horizon shines, 
And broad Penobscot dashes through the pines ; 
Still, as she hastes, her careful fingers hold 
The unfailing hymn-book in its cambric fold. 
Six days at drudgery's heavy wheel she stands, 
The seventh sweet morning folds her weary hands ; 
Yes, child of suffering, thou may'st well be sure 
He who ordained the Sabbath loved the poor ! 

This weekly picture faithful memory draws, 
Nor claims the noisy tribute of applause ; 
Faint is the glow such barren hopes can lend, 
And frail the line that asks no loftier end. 

Trust me, kind listener, I will yet beguile 
Thy saddened features of the promised smile ; 
This magic mantle thou must well divide, 
It has its sable, and its ermine side ; 
Yet, ere the lining of the robe appears, 
Take thou in silence, what I give in tears. 



268 



A SABBATH IN BOSTON. 



Dear listening soul, this transitory scene 
Of murmuring stillness, busily serene ; 
This solemn pause, the breathing-space of man, 
The halt of toil's exhausted caravan, 
Comes sweet with music to thy wearied ear ; 
Rise with its anthems to a holier sphere ! 

Deal meekly, gently, with the hopes that guide 
The lowliest brother straying from thy side ; — 
If right, they bid thee tremble for thine own ; 
If wrong, the verdict is for God alone ! 

What though the champions of thy faith esteem 
The sprinkled fountain or baptismal stream ; 
Shall jealous passions in unseemly strife 
Cross their dark weapons o'er the waves of life ? 

Let my free soul, expanding as it can, 
Leave to his scheme the thoughtful Puritan ; 
But Calvin's dogma shall my lips deride ? 
In that stern faith my angel Mary died ; — 
Or ask if mercy's milder creed can save, 
Sweet sister, risen from thy new-made grave ? 

True, the harsh founders of thy church reviled 
That ancient faith, the trust of Erin's child ; 



A SABBATH IN BOSTON. 



269 



Must thou be raking in the crumbled past 
For racks and fagots in her teeth to cast ? 
See from the ashes of Helvetia's pile 
The whitened skull of old Servetus smile ! 
Round her young heart thy " Romish Upas" threw 
Its firm, deep fibres, strengthening as she grew ; 
Thy sneering voice may call them " Popish 
tricks," — 

Her Latin prayers, her dangling crucifix, — 
But De Profundis blessed her father's grave ; 
That " idol" cross her dying mother gave ! 

What if some angel looks with equal eyes 
On her and thee, the simple and the wise, 
Writes each dark fault against thy brighter creed, 
And drops a tear with every foolish bead ! 

Grieve, as thou must, o'er history's reeking 
page; 

Blush for the wrongs that stain thy happier age ; 
Strive with the wanderer from the better path, 
Bearing thy message meekly, not in wrath ; 
Weep for the frail that err, the weak that fall, 
Have thine own faith, — but hope and pray for all ! 
23* 



PRAYER. 

BY R. M. MILNE S. 

In reverence will we speak of those that woo 
The ear Divine with clear and ready prayer ; 
And while their voices cleave the Sabbath air, 
Know their bright thoughts are winging heaven- 
ward too. 

Yet many a one, — " the latchet of whose shoe" 
These might not loose, — will often only dare 
Lay some poor words between him and despair, — 
" Father, forgive ! we know not what we do." 
For as Christ prayed, so echoes our weak heart, 
Yearning the ways of God to vindicate ; 
But worn and wildered by the shores of fate, 
Of good oppressed and beautiful defiled, 
Dim alien force, that draws or holds apart 
From its dear home that wandering spirit-child. 



THE SACRAMENT. 

BY BISHOP JEREMY TAYLOR.^ 

We sometimes espy a bright cloud formed into 
an irregular figure ; when it is observed by unskil- 
ful and fantastic travellers, it looks like a Centaur 
to some, and as a castle to others ; some tell that 
they saw an army with banners, and it signifies 
war : but another, wiser than his fellow, says, it 
looks for all the world like a flock of sheep, and 
foretells plenty : and all the while it is nothing but a 
shining cloud, by its own mobility, and the activity 
of a wind, cast into a contingent and inartificial 
shape. So it is in this great mystery of our re- 
ligion, in which some espy strange things which 
God intended not, and others see not what God 
hath plainly told : some call that part of it a mys- 
tery which is none ; and others think all of it 
nothing but a mere ceremony, and a sign : some 
say it signifies, and some say it effects ; some say 
it is a sacrifice, and others call it a sacrament ; 
some schools of learning make it the instrument 

* From the Worthy Communicant. 



272 



THE SACRAMENT. 



in the hand of God : others say that it is God him- 
self in that instrument of grace. * * * # * 
Since all the societies of Christians pretend to 
the greatest extreme of this, above all the rites or 
external parts and ministeries of religion, it can- 
not be otherwise but that they will all speak 
honorable things of it, and suppose holy things 
to be in it, and great blessings one way or other to 
come by it ; and it is contemptible only among the 
profane and the atheistical ; all the innumerable 
differences which are in the discourses, and con- 
sequent practices relating to it, proceed from some 
common truths, and universal notions, and mys- 
terious or inexplicable words, and tend all to 
reverential thoughts, and pious treatment of these 
rites and holy offices ; and therefore it will not be 
impossible to find honey or wholesome dews upon 
all this variety of plants. 



THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 



BY REV. W. H. FURNESS. 

" Now is the Son of Man glorified.' 

I consider this exclamation, taken in connec- 
tion with the circumstances, as one of the sublimest 
of the recorded sayings of Jesus. It was uttered 
on the night of his arrest, just as Judas quitted the 
room where the little company of the personal 
friends of Jesus were assembled. Jesus knew the 
character of that false disciple, knew the treacher- 
ous purpose which he had at heart, knew that he 
had now gone to put that purpose into execution, 
and he knew now, as he had never known before, 
that the end of his own career was close at hand, 
that in a few hours his life would be terminated 
by a miserable death. In the progress of events, 
he had now reached a point where the figure of 
the black and frightful cross, which had long 
hovered more or less distinctly before him, sud- 
denly emerges out of the dim future, and stands 
close before his eyes. And how does the grim 
phantom look to him ? That lonely and terrible 



274 



THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 



fate, — why does he not shrink from it with irre- 
pressible horror ? To all human appearance he 
had made no provision to define his purpose to 
the world, to complete his work and his life. He 
had not committed a syllable to writing. He had 
not initiated a single human being into his doc- 
trine. The persons about him were cherishing 
views very different from his. And no wisdom 
that the world had ever possessed, could surmise 
that his death, taking place at that juncture, and 
attended by such circumstances of deep disgrace 
and utter desolation, would prove anything but an 
absolute defeat, consigning his history and his 
name to eternal oblivion. And yet, notwithstand- 
ing all this, when the prospect of his near death 
breaks upon him, with a superhuman power of 
insight he penetrates all the disgraceful associa- 
tions connected with that death, all the agonies 
and the blood, and the cross is instantly all a-blaze 
with an uncreated glory. At the very first glance 
he beholds the awful catastrophe, not as it was 
fitted to strike and appal his shrinking mortal 
nature, but as it was in its essential reality, in the 
sight of the Unerring. 

And now, when the course of centuries has 



THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 



275 



revealed the power of that event, the crucifixion 
of Christ, showing how it inspired his immediate 
successors, how it helped to establish the Christian 
name in the world, redounding to the diffusion of 
truth and the glory of God, we too see that Jesus 
gave utterance to no raving of an imagination 
bewildered by fear, but to the profoundest wisdom, 
to the inspiration of Eternal Truth, when at that 
hour of darkness, in near view of the horrible 
cross, he exclaimed : " Now is the Son of Man 
glorified." He knew beforehand and by a divine 
intuition, what we are slowly learning from his 
death, and from many a death since his, that to 
die for the truth is the completest service that can 
be rendered to it, that the bloody grave of the 
servant of truth is an open gate, through which 
streams the light of eternal glory, and that, as the 
body drops back into its kindred dust, the spirit 
mounts into the invisible and everlasting heavens 
that encircle the world, and reigns forever in the 
world with God. All this Jesus knew. All this 
is implied in that brief declaration of his which is 
our present text. 

Thus this passage gives us a glimpse of the 
kingdom of Heaven, for it shows us, what indeed 



276 



THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 



is evident from the whole life of Christ, that he 
lived in a world very different from that in which 
other men live. When I say this, I do not mean 
that he was absent, forgetful of this visible scene 
of things ; for nothing escaped him. His whole 
manner of teaching, the readiness with which he 
fitted his words to circumstances, shows that he 
looked around him, not with a dreamy, abstracted 
eye, but with all his powers of attention wide 
awake, with the sharpest observation. He made 
everything that occurred answer his purpose as 
exactly as if it were there only for his use. He 
spoke, and the ravens and the lilies waited on him 
to authenticate his instructions. The grain of 
mustard-seed, the falling sparrow, the homely 
leaven, bread and wine, all things became imple- 
ments in his hands to fulfil his ends, to signify his 
truths. No moment found him lost in idle reverie, 
unprepared for its exigencies. There was no 
absence, but a presence of mind, entire, complete. 

When I say, therefore, that he lived in a world 
altogether different from that in which other men 
lived, my meaning becomes clear by reference 
to the fact, that, although the same unchanging 
heavens are stretched out over all our heads, 



THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 



277 



although we walk upon the same earth, and 
breathe the same air, and see by the light of one 
and the same sun, yet there are no two of us that 
live in precisely the same world. The world is to 
every man as it appears to him, and its appear- 
ance to him depends upon his habits of thought, 
his favorite aims. Influenced, blinded, or enlight- 
ened by these, seeing things through the medium 
which is thus formed for him, or which he forms 
for himself, he sees everything under a peculiar 
aspect. Now the differences among men in re- 
spect of habits of mind are so great, that they may 
be said to live each in a world of his own, a world 
which, while in some respects it is identical with 
the world in which we all dwell, yet differs in 
others from the common world, as if spaces as 
vast as those that separate the planets intervened 
between them. 

One man's heart is in his trade. Whatever re- 
lates to that, he sees. Whatever does not relate, 
or appear to relate to it, he does not see, however 
distinctly it may be painted on his retina. He 
looks up to the sky, and the mysterious stars are 
only so many points of light, stirring no emotion, 
stimulating no thought. While another, capti- 
24 



278 



THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 



vated with the sublime science of Nature, beholds 
a magnificent mechanism stretching out through 
an immeasurable expanse, a universe of life and 
beauty, and heaven itself boasts not so gorgeous 
a ceiling. 

Others, again, are the willing slaves of their 
appetites, filled with dreams of sensual pleasure, 
seeking their own gratification at all hazards, 
heedless of the evil they are doing, the ruin which 
they spread. To all such the world in which they 
live is a den. Fine clothes may adorn their per- 
sons, fine sentiments may come flowingly from 
their lips, they may sparkle never so brightly in 
the sun ; but still, I say, their world is a perfect 
den, a den of wild beasts, strewed with the whiten- 
ing bones and bleeding hearts which they trample 
down into the filth and mire ; a world, which dif- 
fers from the world of the pure-hearted, as dark- 
ness differs from light, or hell from heaven. 

And again, that great company, living only for 
ease and amusement, thinking only, day after day, 
about what they shall eat and drink and wear, 
studying to avoid whatever is likely to annoy 
them, whatever puts them out of their way, or 
requires exertion or self-restraint of any sort, — in 



THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 



279 



what a world of their own do people of this de 
scription live, a world of appearance and show, 
whose atmosphere is the breath of dying men, and 
into which truth never comes, and where the dis- 
tant voice of truth, though sweeter than an angel's, 
sounds harsh and unmeaning, and all things are 
in a ceaseless whirl of change, and all its dwellers 
are slowly wasting away, subdued to the shadowy 
quality of all things around them, parting with all 
manliness and reality, and sinking into a state of 
deplorable imbecility ; a land more visionary than 
the regions of the dead, a realm of perpetual 
death, a mansion glittering to the eye, and hung 
all over, outside and in, with flowers, but built over 
graves, nay, itself a grave, a mausoleum, in which 
lights shine and shadows dance, and the sound of 
music is heard, and the worm of vanity and sin 
and remorse is eating out all heart, and leaving 
nothing in the yet beating bosom of man but dust ! 

How wide, once more, the difference between 
the world in which the child lives and that in 
which the aged dwell ! " Heaven lies about us 
in our infancy." Time then to us is grand and 
interminable. Years are eternities. All things 
rejoice in hope, and the path of life is lined with 



280 



THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 



fountains, and the eyes of the young beam with 
delighted expectation. But as we grow old, how 
often do the smiles and the gladness vanish ! The 
world of our youth rolls away from under our feet 
into the dim abysses of the past, and is visible to 
the sad eye of memory as a receding star ; and 
we sink down, and our feet stumble on the dark 
mountains, and we behold only the memorials of 
friends long departed and hopes long ago withered, 
and it is night around us. 

Enough, I suppose, has been said to make very 
plain what I mean, when I say that Jesus dwelt 
in a world very different from that in which we 
live. You misunderstand me entirely, if you take 
the impression that his thoughts were away from 
this world, — that he was not here, body and soul 
here. He saw all that we see, and infinitely more; 
not only the external shape, but the inner life of 
things. Our eyes rest only on surfaces, and dis- 
tinguish superficial relations. He looked with 
clear, unimpeded vision at things and into things. 
He did not overlook the world as it is, but he 
looked through it, through and through, and be- 
hind changing forms he discerned the unchanging 
substance. He looked around and before him 



THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 281 

not through the eye of man, dimmed as that is by 
prejudice and evil passions, and hasty judgments 
and mere appearances, but he saw through the 
eye of God, which nothing deceives and nothing 
escapes. And this text, I say, shows this. In his 
coming crucifixion he saw what no one else saw. 
To all other eyes, that fact, his miserable death 
on the cross, what was it but a bloody mass of 
torture and shame, a horrible ending, the final 
overthrow of his cause, the utter extinction of 
him, and of whatever purposes he had labored to 
realize. But to him it looked not so. He saw 
all the agony and blackness of that event, but he 
saw more. His steady eye pierced to the very 
centre and soul of the fact, and the shame and the 
torture, which covered the cross like a heavy 
cloud, rolled away, and there flashed upon him an 
unearthly glory, — the glory of a mighty martyr- 
dom, a God-given testimony to the truth ; and the 
eternal things of power and wisdom were un- 
veiled, the power and wisdom which Paul after- 
wards caught a vision of, and before which the 
world-renowned wisdom of Greece became folly. 
And did Christ see anything that was not real 1 
Has not the subsequent history of the world at- 
24* 



282 



THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 



tested that he saw his death as it actually was 1 
Did it not lie in the very nature of things, that his 
friends should be moved, as those devoted men 
were moved, by his death, to assert his claims and 
publish his truth ? In a few years, the name of 
him who perished miserably on the cross is sound- 
ing from Jerusalem, through all the cities of 
Greece, to the palaces of imperial Rome, and the 
eternal glory of God shines with an unclouded 
beam from the cross of Christ. Every associa- 
tion of shame has dropped off from that instru- 
ment of death, and now it surmounts the temples 
of Christendom. And thus it is shown, that he 
saw only what was and is. He gave utterance to 
no delusion of enthusiasm. He spoke only the 
simple truth, when he pronounced that bitter death 
divinely glorious. Thus it was with him always. 
He spoke, he lived in a very different world from 
ours, but still a present world, a world near to us 
as it was to him, and nearer than the world of the 
senses. 

Different as was his world from ours, still oc- 
casionally, in our best moments, we all catch 
glimpses of the world of Christ. When we feel 
sorrow at our wrong-doings, when we blush and 



THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 



283 



feel degraded before the meanness of our thoughts, 
the selfishness of our motives, the depravity of our 
desires, when we long for the inward security 
which this world does not give us, or when the 
contemplation of some heroic deed or man sets 
our hearts in a glow and causes our eyes to fill 
with tears, then the veil is raised a little, and the 
sensations we experience at these times are the 
realities of that other world coming in contact 
with us, pressing upon our inmost hearts. Then 
do we receive significant hints, too significant to 
be neglected or mistaken, that there are things 
not dreamed of even, while we slumber in the lap 
of the world; interests which cannot be estimated, 
and in comparison with which our temporal con- 
cerns, passionately as we cling to them, are things 
foreign and strange to us. Then we may see, if 
we will, that we are in a majestic invisible world, 
a world which God animates by his eternal recti- 
tude and love, even as the outward frame of things 
is supported by his power. Then do we catch 
sight of those awful and irreversible laws, which 
convert the man who obeys them into a god, by 
which whosoever falls on them is broken, and on 
whomsoever they fall, they will grind him to pow- 



284 



THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 



der. This is the new world, — old things pass 
away, all things become new ; the world of moral 
truth, and spiritual light, and religious principles, 
whose inhabitants look at things not in their acci- 
dental relations, nor as they appear to human 
pride and passion, not as they are connected with 
personal prejudices and temporary interests, but 
exactly as they are, in nature and truth. Christ, 
I say, lived and moved and had his being in that 
world. And of course he regarded not the person 
of any man, but the inner nature of all men. The 
poor, the outcast, from whose bare touch the sanc- 
timonious Pharisee shrank with abhorrence, com- 
manded his divinest sympathy. For the lowest 
he was ready to sacrifice himself to the uttermost, 
counting it all joy and honor. For in the lowest 
he saw a spiritual nature mysteriously and most 
intimately related to the Almighty Spirit, and 
waiting to be clothed upon with an uncreated glo- 
ry. Dwelling among spiritual realities, he looked 
up to those spiritual heights, the everlasting moun- 
tains which man is fashioned to ascend, and down 
into the depths of spiritual loss in which he may 
fall ; and these things it was, that caused him to 
stand all unmoved and triumphant before the ter- 



THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 



285 



rible cross. Bodily suffering and death, these 
huge evils as they look to us, dwindled, in his 
view, back to their native littleness, in comparison 
with the degradation and death of the divine soul. 
And all that the world offers to bless us with was 
but dust to the priceless pearl of a pure spirit, a 
commanding conscience, a lowly and loving heart. 
Not in ease and plenty, but in a holy mind, in a 
spiritual condition, here was life. This gained, 
all was gained. This was wealth, this was suc- 
cess, this was victory, this was power, in his world. 
Having this, though poor and persecuted, he as- 
cended up high over all the earth, and gave gifts 
unto men with a most royal bounty. Such was 
the world in which Christ lived. Thus did things 
look to him. In a word, this was the kingdom 
of heaven, which he preached, in view of which 
he called upon men to amend their lives, for it 
was at hand. It was in him and around him. He 
carried it with him, and was himself a radiant 
centre of that invisible sphere, that eternal world, 
into which he came to lead men; not a far off state 
of being, beyond the grave and the sky, but com- 
prehending the grave and the sky and all things 
visible and invisible within it, a celestial condition 
here and now within the reach of every one of us. 



VIA CRUCIS, VIA LUCIS. 

FROM KOSEGARTEIf. 

Through night to light! — And though to mortal 

eyes 

Creation's face a pall of horror wear, 
Good cheer ! good cheer ! The gloom of midnight 
flies ; 

Then shall a sunrise follow, mild and fair. 

Through storm to calm ! — And though his thun- 
der-car 

The rumbling tempest drive through earth and 
sky, 

Good cheer ! good cheer ! The elemental war 
Tells that a blessed healing hour is nigh. 

Through frost to spring ! — And though the bitter 
blast 

Of Eurus stiffen nature's juicy veins, 
Good cheer ! good cheer ! When winter's wrath is 
past, 

Soft murmuring spring breathes sweetly o'er 
the plains. 



VIA CRUCIS, VIA LUCIS. 287 



ThrougK strife to peace! — And though with brist- 
ling front, 

A thousand frightful deaths encompass thee, 
Good cheer ! good cheer ! Brave thou the battle's 
front 

For the peace-march and song of victory. 

Through sweat to sleep ! — And though the sultry 
noon, 

With heavy, drooping wing, oppress thee now, 
Good cheer! good cheer! The cool of evening 
soon 

Shall lull to sweet repose thy weary brow. 

Through cross to crown! And though thy spirit's 
life 

Trials untold assail with giant strength, 
G ood cheer ! good cheer ! Soon ends the bitter 
strife 

And thou shalt reign in peace with Christ at 
length. 

Through woe to joy ! — And though at morn thou 
weep, 

And though the midnight find thee weeping still, 



288 



VIA CRUCIS, VIA LUCIS. 



Good cheer ! good cheer ! The Shepherd loves his 
sheep ; 

Resign thee to the watchful Father's will. 

Through death to life! — And through this vale of 
tears, 

And through this thistle-field of life, ascend 
To the great supper in that world whose years 
Of bliss unfading, cloudless, know no end. 



A PRAYER. 

BY R. M. MILNES. 

Evil, every living hour, 

Holds us in its wilful hand, 
Save as thou, essential Power, 

Mays't be gracious to withstand : 
Pain within the subtle flesh, 

Heavy lids that cannot close, 
Hearts that Hope will not refresh, — 

Hand of healing ! interpose. 

Tyranny's strong breath is tainting 

Nature's sweet and vivid air, 
Nations silently are fainting 

Or up-gather in despair : 
Not to those distracted wills 

Trust the judgment of their woes 
While the cup of anguish fills, — 

Arm of justice ! interpose. 

Pleasures night and day are hovering 
Round their prey of weary hours, 

Weakness and unrest discovering 
In the best of human powers : 
25 



290 



A PRAYER. 



Ere the fond delusions tire, 
Ere envenomed passion grows 

From the root of vain desire, — 
Mind of Wisdom ! interpose. 

Now no more in tuneful motion 

Life with love and duty glides ; 
Reason's meteor-lighted ocean 

Bears us down its mighty tides ; 
Head is clear and hand is strong, 

But our heart no haven knows ; 
Sun of Truth ! the night is long, — 

Let thy radiance interpose ! 



THE HA' BIBLE. 



BY ROBERT NICOLL. 

Chief of the household gods 

Which hallow Scotland's lowly cottage-homes! 
While looking on thy signs, 

That speak, though dumb, deep thought upon 
me comes ; 

With glad yet solemn dreams my heart is stirred, 
Like childhood's, when it hears the carol of a bird! 

The Mountains old and hoar, 

The chainless Winds, the Streams so pure and 
free, 

The GoD-enamelled Flowers, 

The waving Forest, the eternal Sea, 
The Eagle floating o'er the mountain's brow, — 
Are teachers all; but, O! they are not such as 
Thou! 

O ! I could worship thee ! 

Thou art a gift a God of Love might give ; 
For Love and Hope and Joy, 

In thy Almighty- written pages live ; — 



292 



THE HA' BIBLE. 



The slave who reads shall never crouch again ; 
For, mind-inspired by thee, he bursts his feeble 
chain ! 

God ! unto Thee I kneel, 

And thank Thee! Thou unto my native land — 
Yea, to the outspread earth — 

Hast stretched in love Thy everlasting hand, 
And Thou hast given earth, and sea and air — 
Yea, all that heart can ask of good, and pure, and 
fair ! 

And, Father, Thou hast spread 

Before Man's eyes this charter of the free, 
That all thy Book might read, 

And Justice love, and Truth, and Liberty. 
The gift was unto men — the giver God ! 
Thou Slave ! it stamps thee Man — go, spurn thy 
weary load ! 

Thou doubly-precious Book ! 

Unto thy light what doth not Scotland owe ? — 
Thou teachest Age to die, 

And Youth in truth unsullied up to grow ! 
In lowly homes a comforter art thou — 
A sunbeam sent from God — an everlasting bow ! 



THE HA' BIBLE. 



293 



O'er thy broad, ample page, 

How many dim and aged eyes have pored ! 
How many hearts o'er thee, 

In silence deep and holy, have adored! 
How many mothers, by their infants' bed, 
Thy holy, blessed, pure, child-loving words have 
read ! 

And o'er thee soft young hands 

Have oft in truthful-plighted love been joined ; 
And thou to wedded hearts 

Hast been a bond — an altar of the mind ! — 
Above all kingly power or kingly law 
May Scotland reverence aye The Bible of the 
Ha'! 



